UPDATE: Many Obama defenders in the comments are claiming that the numbers above do not include spending on Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush years. They most certainly do. While Bush did fund the wars through emergency supplementals (not the regular budget process), that spending did not simply vanish. It is included in the numbers above. Also, some Obama defenders are claiming the graphic above represents biased Heritage Foundation numbers. While we stand behind the numbers we put out 100%, the numbers, and the graphic itself, above are from the Washington Post. We originally left out the link to WaPo. It has now been added.

CLARIFICATION: Of course, this Washington Post graphic does not perfectly delineate budget surpluses and deficits by administration. President Bush took office in January 2001, and therefore played a lead role in crafting the FY 2002-2008 budgets. Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for the FY 2009 budget deficit that overlaps their administrations, before President Obama assumes full budgetary responsibility beginning in FY 2010. Overall, President Obama’s budget would add twice as much debt as President Bush over the same number of years.

Your faux outrage is misdirected. In 2001 the U.S. government took in more money than it spent and was paying down on the national debt, the fourth year in a row of surpluses. What happened in 2001 to turn all those surpluses into deficits and is still being compounded everyday? Bush hadn’t started his war in Iraq that he refused to pay for; Medicare Part D – which was not paid for – had not been passed; significant amounts had not been spent on homeland security. In 2001 the gop Congress waived the Pay-Go rules and passed the first of Baby Bush’s irresponsible tax cuts. In 2002 they let the Pay-Go rules expire. In 2003 Bush started his unpaid for war in Iraq and just a few months later he signed another another irresponsible tax cut into law, the first time an American president signed tax cuts into law during a time of war. Don’t attempt to blame Obama for the problems that were created by Baby Bush’s tax cuts and the spending he refused to pay for in cooperation with a reckless and irresponsible gop Congress.

When Bush took office, the national debt was $5.73 trillion. When he left, it was $10.7 trillion. That's a difference of $4.97 trillion. which is the biggest increase under any president in U.S history. As Obama came in the debt has shot up significantly , mostly due to the economic meltdown of 2008 and the government's efforts to shore up the federal banking system ( and we all know on who presidency that happened ). And the war that is currently going on in Iraq and Afghanistan which he has decreased the number of soldiers, thus less spending. So how can u blame someone who was giving a whole lots of crap to deal with.

Ah yes, the Obamanator. Keeper of the Faith, leader of the Sheeple, preparer of the cool-aid, and usurper of the Constitution. He can do no wrong. Promises made not kept. Lies told yet never happened. Who was it that locked the Republicans out of all those secret meetings while the Health Care Reform was being concocted and penned, all the while, the American Public was told that his Presidency was unquestionably going to be transparent? So the new DEM is eating up our future and putting us in an upside-down loan with China, but what about the previous DEM? What was his legacy? Before George W laid his hand on the Bible, the Clinton Era economics had already begun to self-implode. Remember the huge E-Commerce bust and the ensuing meltdown on Wall Street? Don't worry, most don't remember something trivial like that. 9/11 had that kind of effect on people. Remember the Father of the Internet, Al Gore? If you can catch the Green Crusader at a lull from his World saving duties while he makes himself and a chosen group filthy rich, he will spin ye a yarn or two about how he single-handedly brought about the prosperity and rise of the Internet and E-Commerce. To sum it all up; Venture Capital. Hoards of investors lined the pockets of anyone that had an idea. At first, they were worthy ideas, but it soon became blank check spending any kid in college could code a website. Soon it was virtual money invested in a virtual world. Toward the end of King Clinton's reign, this virtual Monopoly game came to a screeching halt. OK, it's just phunny money you say? Investors would never blindly put millions of dollars into some 19 year old kid's half concocted idea just to have the next best thing you insist. 1999 say the beginning of the E-Com Bust. 2000 saw the stark reality of playing in the virtual world. Orders for networking equipment and contracts slowed to an abrupt halt. In fact, orders for any durable goods and services connected with doing E-Commerce drastically slowed crippling cash flow and growth of hardware and software manufacturers. HP, Dell, Compaq, Toshiba, etc all hit hard times with their computers. Networking giants like Nortel Networks, Cisco, Bay Networks, AT&T and scores of other smaller companies to a major nosedive in profits. An untold number of IT, software developers, website designers, network engineers and the like lost their jobs. This impacted Financial sectors which quickly trickled down to the rest of the economy. Enter 9/11 and bam! There you have it. Look at Department of Labor Unemployment Statistics and see for yourself where the spikes in unemployment occur and how they translate to this information that I present to you. The DNC 2012 is playing out that we are better off than 4 years ago. Bill Clinton lied, yet again, stating that unemployment was higher during Bush's terms than they are now. The facts just don't support that wild claim there Slick Willy.

You have a perfectly logical nametag. CRS because you cannot remember crap. When did the Progressives assume control of the congress? 2007 until 2010 they controlled the purse strings. So for us Tea Party supporters that are too dumb to analyze things, the Tax&Spend Socialist Democrats are running up the debt like there is no tomorrow. And of course you don't want to read anything that does not support your Socialist ways of thinking. The Progressives do not believe in the freedoms proffered by our founding fathers. 1st and foremost on their menu is devouring of the Right to Religeous freedom, then free speech, freedom from Government becoming an oligarthy as is the present administrations goals. They want Obama to declare himself the King and declare martial law so he can finish the destruction of the Democratic Republic and replace it with The Arab Republic of America with sharia law instead of the rule of law.

I think your source of information is false (fox)news the democrats only had a filibuster proof congress for 19 days because of the record number of appointments being held up by Republicans as part of their vow to undermine president Obama detailed in the book Do not ask what good we do. Also by the 1980s, the U.S. financial sector was failing to perform its essential function of channeling savings to productive investment in the real economy. Financial firms on Wall Street focused instead on making a quick buck by stripping assets from existing businesses and downsizing their workforces, and on various forms of complex financial engineering that had little economic value. Financial firms also provided critical support for a “strong dollar” policy that diverted productive investment away from the U.S. manufacturing sector toward overseas operations. By the eve of the crash of 2008, the manufacturing sector had shrunk to half its 1960 size, while the financial sector had doubled in size and accounted for 40 percent of corporate profits.

The deindustrialization of America and the substitution of speculation for productive investment were not accidents, they were not inevitable, and they were not the outcome of natural forces. They were the predictable results of mistaken policy choices made by politicians of both parties for more than a generation. These policy choices had victims with first and last names: millions of displaced workers, shuttered factories and hollowed-out communities across the country hobbled by shrinking tax bases that no longer could support vital public services.

Both deindustrialization and the dysfunction of finance contributed to a remarkable rise in economic inequality starting in the late 1970s. Trade deficits and offshoring wiped out millions of well-paying, middle-class jobs, and the threat of offshoring held down wages for all workers. But a long list of other deliberate policy choices also played key roles in the rise of inequality. These included the abandonment of full employment in favor of fighting inflation, the prolonged attack on workers’ right to organize and bargain collectively with their employers, the erosion of the minimum wage and other labor protections and massive tax cuts for the wealthy. In the end, nearly two-thirds of the pre-tax income gains after 1979 were captured by the richest 10 percent and more than half was captured by the richest 1 percent.

this is far from the truth, wikipedia.org nation debt by presidential term will tell the truth. Bush 2001-2005 2.135 Trillion, Bush 2005-2008 3.971 trillion, this started for defense back in the Reagan years, Obama 2009 to 2010 1.653 trillion

Bush gave drug companies a ton of money so they can continue to sell us anti-depressants etc and use illegal marketing to make all the unhealthy people in our country crazy. The health business has become a joke and made us a joke to other countries.

Obama puts a cheaper plan in place so that health plans can be subsidized and the rich people go crazy about it. What's wrong with the greedy people in this country? What happened to humanity?

As far as the numbers go, everything I've read says Bush spent a lot more money than Obama and is solely responsible for the financial collapse. Obama may not be helping the deficit yet but obama care vs Bush tactics? I'll take obama care over Bush swindling us out of billions and sacrificing 4400 lives in Iraq to line the pockets of his frat buddies.

Well since Bush approved 900 Billion to wall street to be spent during Obama's term, id say this picture is not representative of the fact that Bush was biggest spendthrift since LBJ and about as bad as Obama. Take half of 1.8 trillion in 2008 and give it back to Bush. Both parties are the same. Want to know differences, lets talk about issues that go on forever such as abortion, gun control, gay rights. The Carlisle Group demonstrates politicians true intentions – make money from influence and Sc@#w the American people.

"Overall, President Obama’s budget would add twice as much debt as President Bush over the same number of years."
So, how much of Bush's budget was added the national debt compared to President Clinton's, Bet it was more than doubled
Who bailed out the Bank's? I'll bet it was Bush.
Now your going to say we can't blame everything on Bush. Well, everything was fine until he got in office, The republican are still trying to blame 9/11 on Clinton, but bush was in office over a year and halve, So now the republicans are trying to blame the bank bailout on President Obama… Not going to happen

Lets please clear up part of the record. The biggest expense of the government by far is the department of defense. The costs of the multiple wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been huge. Now let me mention a little detail that most of you don't know. The Bush administration was not including the costs of those wars in their budget! They would propose the funding as "emergency" or "supplemental" funding bills so that they could avoid including them in the official budget to make it look better. Obama is changing that to get rid of the phony accounting tricks and bring accountability to the budget. Yes, it makes the budget look much worse right off the bat because we're including that in the numbers now, but the plan is to reduce the U.S. presence in Iraq to cut some of that out of control spending. That will reduce the budget expenditures.

No, the biggest expense of the government are entitlement programs. You aren't even close. Defense spending also returns almost dollar for dollar back to the general economy, something which entitlement programs don't do. Yes, the wars have not helped the budget. We are winding down Iraq and Afghanistan. Osama is dead. But as to your other comments, you are clueless, the government has expanded even faster than under Bush. Get a clue.

Would you care to explain to me how Social Security and Medicare are entitlements? Americans pay into those programs, OUT OF THEIR OWN POCKETS, with the promise the federal government would leave it there for them when they retire !!!! THAT, sir, is NOT an entitlement. That sad part is WE THE PEOPLE have no choice and HAVE to pay into those programs whether they want to or not, then the federal government STEALS that money to use anyway they want, with no regard for those they are holding the money for. WELFARE is an entitlement ~ the people pay nothing into it but get money out of it.. Please get your facts straight and be fair to those who tried to prepare for a rainy day, only to have the politicians steal their money behind their backs without asking approval to "borrow" the money.

Bet you will be one of the first to scream for our military when we get attacked by the enemy. You can't build up a defense overnight, that is why it is best to keep it built up now so we are safe from the enemy if and when we are attacked. When that day comes, (hopefully it never will), please step aside and let them protect those of us who support our troops and when that is done, then they can look after you and those who think like you. Let's worry about cutting back on the fraud in Social Security and Medicare and quit giving money to the illegals who have no right to the money and we can save a HUGE bundle of money !!

Social Security and Medicare were established as a program where employees and employers shared the contributions to the fund. The fund was to be kept separate and invested to grow as the years passed. The government had no right to dip into the fund to spend it. Had they left it alone and allowed the contributions to increase year after year there would be no shortage in the social security fund. A large percentage of people for several years paid into the fund and didn't live long enough to draw any money this would offset the people who are living longer now and draw more money. Have the general accounting office go back and audit the fund and force the government to replace the money plus interest. That will take care of the shortfall in social security.

Excess FICA taxes were paid, since the 1983 SS accord, by future annuitants to fund the "Baby Boomer" crunch, now upon us. Those funds were all spent as received, leaving a pile of IOUs on the US Treasury behind; now amounting to about $2.7 TRILLION dollars. When needed (NOW) that debt must be funded by increased US general taxation or borrowing. We NOW borrow 42 cents of every federal dollar spent. Only an idiot cannot see where this is headed. We are already now, as a notion insolvent, thatnks to brain-dead citizenry re-electing the same fools to office. May Heaven help our children and grandchildren for they are inheriting a woeful future, crafted by the "leaders" we have elected (BOTH PARTIES). Revolution, anyone?

@Proud American: Seriously? Can you name the times we've EVER been attacked by 'the enemy'?
1) Hawaii when the Japanese found out we were joining the battle and our navy posed the biggest threat.
2) 9/11 . Call it blowback from Reagan putting Bin Laden in power or inside job or evil muslims who hated our freedom; it doesn't matter. There was NO ONE to attack, but we were ok with just fighting anyone.
So your point makes no sense. We've never been attacked where we NEEDED to fight back just as our founding fathers predicted. There is NO need for our inflated military. Our military is as big as China, Russia, England and France's added together and then all multiplied by two?

Really? You don't know jack about the history of our country. You do remember that the british BURNED DOWN THE WHITE HOUSE IN 1812, DON'T YOU? Or how about in 1916 when mexico attacked? Seriously, if you don't remember that the white house got attacked shut up and move out of the country

Military spending creates jobs. Medicare, Social Security monies come from people paying into these funds…just so you'll understand, it's our money to begin with, it's not an entitlement. Welfare, on the other hand, IS an entitlement, and too many lazy people take advantage of it. I am not saying that ALL people on welfare, abuse it. There are those that are disabled, elderly, etc., that have no other choice, but there are too many that are able to work, but refuse to do so, and just abuse the system repeatedly. These are the ones that need to be cut off completely, and forced to make an honest living like the rest of us. That will never happen under Obama. .

You cannot quantify the investment which is made into National defense. Dollar for dollar, the investment ensures continued democracy for a republic which has leaned left to ensure entitlements without a return on it's investment is met….bottom line, cut entitlements, lower taxes and we will be able to develop a stronger nation without a large socialistic approach…

Force the poor and disabled into the streets to work. Where are the jobs? Large numbers of people will never have a chance to succeed without help. Do you really want that many people to die. I thought you might be pro-life, but you're not, you're pro-death. This could be a rebuttal for any man on this site. I'm not trying to pick on you personally.

We have as a nation very little in the way of TRUE entitlements. I know that some folk like to call Social Security and Medicare entitlements but IN FACT they are NOT. Social Security is PAID with FICA taxes which WE ALL pay into.

if you want to divide medicare, medicade, social security, welfare, and other entitlement programs into individual categories (which is absolutely ridiculous) then yes spending on defense takes the highest proportion of money spent. however, considering entitlements in general makes them BY FAR the largest expense of the government, totaling more than 50% of all of the money we spend. in addition, if you just want to look at how much money has been added to the national debt each year, obama will still have added well over 5 trillion dollars by the end of FY 2011, which is more than the 4.5 trillion bush added in 8 years. im not a fan of bush, and i didn't like his wasteful spending, but there's no doubt obama is taking that to new levels that go above and beyond what we've done before, and he's being extremely irresponsible because he doesn't have the record tax revenues that bush did to back his ridiculous spending. with tax revenues at historic lows at 15% of GDP instead of 18.5% of gdp in 2007, you'd think he'd cut back. instead he's increased spending from a bush average of about 19% of gdp to 24% of gdp. the numbers make anyone who criticizes bush and supports obama look like an idiot.

Something somewhere has to stimulate the economy to create tax revenue. If you just stop spending, period, the US will cease to exist! The only entity willing and able to provide that stimulus in a worldwide economic down cycle is the US Treasury. Why is this so hard to understand when it is exactly the same strategy used after the Great Depression of 1929 to stimulate the economy then? Roosevelt used the WPA and CCC using federal dollars in deficit spending to create millions of jobs. Then WWII started, and our defense contractors (who weren't multinational profiteers at the time like they are now) also added tremendously to tax revenues. If anything, President Obama hasn't spent enough!

Unemployment during Roosevelt remained high until we went into WWII. His massive spending did not bring us out of the depression at all. No example in history shows Keynesian Economics as being successful. Roosevelt… the majority of what he did was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, until he threatened the Court with adding 9 new Justices that would side with him on all legislation. Roosevelts spending just dragged the US along the bottom, very similar to how Obama's spending is dragging us along the bottom.

Since the President's actual, constitutional powers have next to nothing to do with the economy it can be argued that Clinton's Keynesian ideals had a lot less to do with that surplus than the Reaganomics of a House and Senate that both had a Republican majority.

Obama took us into Libya and Yeman for no justified cause… Stop about Bush already. Clintons and your idea of cutting Military spending helped to allow 9/11 to happen. We NEED our Military and our weapons. We have enemies in this world and should be ready to protect ourselves, period. Democrats love to spend. Any working class person with a High School Diploma and a calculator could fix our budget and deficit. STOP HANDING MONEY TO LAZY PEOPLE!!!! STOP PAYING OUR REPRESENTATIVES SOOO MUCH!!! TROOPS DON'T GET THAT PAY AND THEY ARE DYING FOR OUR FREEDOM NOT POINTING FINGERS AS OUR OVERPAID REPRESENTATIVES DO!!!
We need to stop these social plans that are being implemented and fix what is in place. We as a people need to defend our Constitution and not our opinion. If we don't we won't have any rights left to fight for.. Vote Obama out and get someone who LOVES this Nation and it's Constitution in there.. LETS SAVE OUR COUNTRY FROM OUR GOVERNMENT!!!!

Dave ..are you Stupid or what ? Ask your mom, for forgiveness, she can't help you anymore. DO YOUR HOMEWORK. Compare troops, spending and reasoning. No lies or false info… you might as well call it a night cause you are not making sense. Bush numbers and Obamas situation are not even close. See who lost a surplus, raised the deficit 7 times and Bush had no Vetoes till his last year…he was the spending fool, WITH NOTHING TO SHOW FOR IT. The war debt and tax cut debt DOES NOT JUST GO AWAY WHEN YOU ARE OUT OF OFFICE.

The only thing you are right about is that "Bush numbers & Obama's situation are not even close" Obama had quadrupled (thats 4 times) the deficit more then Bush did in the same number of years. You have a very simplistic view and as most libs avoid learning the facts. That way you don't have to defend an indefensible president. Defend these issues with facts if you can… "Fast & furious" starring Eric Holder. Obamacare. Solyndra. Failed stimulus (do you know some of the things money went to? You would be amazed, and could never ever defend it.) How about how well he's doing with unemployment? No way to get around it Gail, he's a huge failure as president.

According to the CBO, defence is 25% of the budget. It is the single largest category. When entilements are added together they add up to 57% of the budget (CBO FY, 2011). You can cut the entire defence budget and not balance the budget. It is time for ALL Americans to face the facts that we are spending way too much. president Obama stated 70 million checks may not go out if they do not make a deal. in a population of 307 million (US Census, 2010) that would mean over 22% of the population recieves a govement check.

"During the presidency of George W. Bush, the gross public debt increased from $5.7 trillion in January 2001 to $10.7 trillion by December 2008.[1] Under President Barack Obama, the debt increased from $10.7 trillion in 2008 to $14.2 trillion by February 2011.[2]"

[1] United States Department of the Treasury, Bureau of the Public Debt (December 2010). "The debt to the penny and who holds it". TreasuryDirect. Retrieved March 2, 2011.
[2] "Monthly Statement of the Public Debt of the United States- February 28, 2011" (PDF). Treasury Department. Retrieved May 18, 2011.

I'll give you some sources. US Treasury's website – then you can really see how the deficit happened. The CBO website (Congressional Budget Office)
Review the "Community Reinvestment Act" initiated during Carter's presidency. It's impossible for dems to admit they are responsible for the housing crisis. This will show you how they are.

When Bush came into the office of President the National Debt was $ 5.73 Trillion when he left office the National Debt was $10.7 Trillion, for a total of the debt increase of $4.97 trillion more than any other president in US history. The budget is currently increasing at the rate of $3.87 billion USD per day. Much of that amount is payment for interest owed on the Debt, The National debt was on a downward indicator up until President Carter left office and president Regan took office and has increase dramatically since then, the only time of a decrease was during Clinton's' term in office. The Tax cut to the rich is a great part of the rise in the National Debt, Which cut down income, during a time of the US fighting Two useless wars and High gas prices.

Tax cuts are not costs. The money belongs to those who earn it. More importantly, TAX CUTS BRING IN MORE MONEY TO THE GOVERNMENT. THIS MEANS FROM YOUR WARPED POINT OF VIEW THEY PAY FOR THEMSELVES. — Take a deep breath and read that again. It's all true.

@JustLurkin Woww! Really? Two words "failed logic" only on paper does supply side economics bring in more money to the govt. But it has been established that this is not the case, if you look at the numbers, from actually .gov websites, you will see tax revenue drop during the Reagan and Bush administrations. Something that sounds good on paper but does not produce actually results constitutes Reaganomcis as "failed logic"

You need to check your facts Daniel. The national debt was not 10 trillion when Bush left office! Where did you find that nugget of misinformation? Can you site the source please? What I do know is that as of this week our deficit is almost at 15 Trillion. (check US Treasury website and CBO website to verify) Obama has been unprecedented in his spending and increase of national debt – enough to get our countries credit rating downgraded. Obama has set the spending record, not Bush. Learn the issues Daniel!

Emergency or Supplemental funds have to be requested from congress if all allocated budget money is used , the Bush budget would account for the normal operation of the military yes and they they would ask for money for the war. Whether we agree with these wars or not they are there and have to be funded. If i remember correctly Obama was going to remove all the troops by the end of 2011 well he has 4 months I figure he will not make that goal. He also said he would have someone sit down and talk to another country before he attacked them to insure all avenues had been exhausted tell that to Libya. So much for TRANSPARENCY.

Well Rocky….I know what you said is true…I have to laugh at the guy who claimed Obama raised the debt 400% in the first year with the stimulus package. Either the guy (and anyone who believes those numbers is a total idiot.) doesn't realize how the war was NOT included in the BUSH Budget nor was accountability for the tax cuts for beloved "job creators" It was all about accountability. Foe the last 4 years Bush and company denied any problems existed. You gotta love all the terms the Republicans come up with like patriot act, job creators, axis of evil, WMD of the likes. They pulled the rug out from the economy and watch with that smug smirk (Jon Boehner) like when they would HOLD THE ECONOMY HOSTAGE by not letting the tax cuts for the rich expire. Total J.O's … I wish Obama would hang them out to dry. It's funny when the Republicans screw something up it's the presidents fault…when things when south when a republican is in office it's the senate and congress fault. yet…when they controlled both, they eliminated the surplus and raised the deficit 7 times…not once or twice…and they DID HAVE A SURPLUS, whereas Obama was given the reins of the Titanic while they jumped on the lifeboat, in front of all our children ( poor job creators)

Thank you! The Republicans have run up the deficit by percentage more than the Dems, with Rockin Ronnie the biggest at 189%. Considering the economy and wars Obama inherited, deficit spending is a red herring as is that regulation not needed.

Baloney Rocky,
WHATEVER BUSH CALLED IT IT WAS STILL INCLUDED. Otherwise Obama would call welfare cupcakes & give every one of you democrats twice the handouts you get now!. No wonder democrats are such functional illiterates!

What budget yes by law Obama is supposed to have one but as of yet he has not had one yes not one in his hole term
that is to keep all the figures from coming out so no one really knows how bad he really is and what others can find is to nuts for words and that might not be the half of it but for really look it up not one year

I just felt a need to point out that current spending is significantly less than the 20-40% of GDP spent during WWII. And this spending wouldn't have been necessary if the last guy didn't break the world.

And for those who believe WII brought us out of the Great Depression, how did it do that? Spending.

Please, it got us out because of other countries borrowing from us and to be totally truthful, the men that died did not need to be employed anymore. Callous but true. Look at the numbers and stop trying to justify the disaster of the current administration. This is what you get when you vote an ignorant leftist into power. Luckily, he will be gone in less than two years.

The men returning home from the war required housing. The women they married required a house with furniture. Men needed something other than a uniform. The new found job required a car. The car needed maintenance, gas and tires. People saw this as an REASON to START a business. Children where born. (Remember the baby – boom?) Products for children needed to be manufactured, sold, shipped and retailed. Gosh darn a business cycle!

That is the falecy of the left wing party. GOVERNMENT SPENDING does not improve the economy.. Growth in the private sector create JOBS. People with jobs then SPEND money. We are capable of stimulating the econmy with our own money, and we dont need the government reaching into our pockets to spend it for us. Its really simple:
if we dont allow the private sector to grow, they do not hire, if they dont hire, we dont have jobs and if we dont have jobs, we cant spend… I dont know about you, but I never got a job from a poor man. think about it…

Ok I may not understand everything, but just checking… You would have rather Obama let the auto companies fail, terminating thousands of jobs, then let several banks, etc. go bankrupt? You honestly believe that that wouldn't have plunged the country (let alone the rest of the world that we trade heavily with, obviously) into a horrible depression? You seriously wish that he'd sat back and said, "we'll let the free markets fix this one." And if he did, and the country's economy came to a grinding halt, would you be standing by his side, saying, "But he made the right choice. Who knew this would happen?"

I highly doubt it.

I also am absolutely baffled that you think the private sector would actually grow if said businesses and banks went bankrupt. I'm sorry, but that's just laughable. The banks are scared to lend now and I'm sure it's hurting businesses. What do you think it would do to employers if their banks SHUT DOWN?

Clearly you have no business background or clue as to what would've happened if Obuma did not bail out the auto industry. Well, let me school you. If Oblama had not bailed out the auto industry, GM would've have gone into bankruptcy. This may sound like a terrible thing to the average citizen, but it's actually very common in the business world. GM would simply then have restructured their debt, as well as their chain of command, coming out on the other side exactly the same, well except it would still be privately owned (Now is Government Motors).

Can you imagine if the government tried to step in and bail out every major industry that was in trouble? Where was Obuma when American Airlines filed for bankruptcy in 2011? They did exactly what I listed above, and are still operating. When Romney said Obama should have let GM go into bankruptcy, this is what he was speaking of. Obuma has zero experience to run a posicle stand, let alone this country. Romney has extensive business background, and has actually had to implement this process on numerous occasions. WAKE UP PEOPLE!!! Four more years of this guys will set this great nation back decades!!!!

Finally someone with brains making a remark what makes sense. Thank you Ashley! Let us spread the word because these Republicans are loudmouths and not every one is reading and thinking. Many people are blind followers. Remember how many German citizens stood by and let a loudmouth have his way?

While you do have a point, that if the auto companies failed that it would certainly affect the market and economy in a negative way. Now, that said, there were still options left to them that were not tapped like a private bailout from another company that is by the way part of the free market. While the government didn't allow that to happen which in part is a good thing dont get me wrong, there is also the possibility that if only two of the big three failed the one left standing would, not immediately, eventually pick up the slack and possibly buy the other failed businesses. For example if you recall Ford didn't take/ receive any funds. They later made one of the largest come backs in history. Stock prices went from around 2 dollars to over $14. They are still successful to this day fallowing their comeback. So hypothetically they/Ford would have swooped in and consumed one or both of the other big three thus limiting their competition, securing more technology and procuring a larger slice of the market which could have been A MASSIVE TURNAROUND. But that is all hypothetical but very realistic and possible.

Now as for how we made it out of WW II we also received war reparations from the defeated axis powers. Along with a booming industrial sector and literally tons of jobs to be had. prior to the war they actually tried tons of government programs and they all did very little. Because government programs ARE NOT PERMANENT JOBS. (BTW this is not all directed at you Ashley).

Keynes says spending is great. You are mistaken. Keynes said during recession spend during a surplus save. We only spend. We had zero unemployment because everyone was off at war. Rationed food and austerity. Please sir study Economics you will see kenyes neat little equations do not work. On another note we spent 12 trillion. That's with a T. Are we in a surplus yet? Until bush and Obama we never spent more than 3 percent of our GDP! On another note we are fighting 5 unecesaary wars! For the death of a couple thousand we invade 4 countries torture rape the innocent. I entice you no I plead with you to attack me with a straw mans argument: you are unpatriotic. Im fiscally responisible and enraged by our great nation declining in 12 years. S & l, prime mortgages crises could have been easily avoided. Our government has lost touch with reality. We need change. Not Obama. "I will cut the deficit in half" it's at 14.7 trillion!

I would like to inform you we didn't get out of the great depression by spending or WWII. The reason we got out of the great depression was due to the returning solider, less government intervention in the market, and the boom in supply of workers (this allowed for more products to be made). Spending isn't free and never will be. The idea of a free lunch is complete nonsense. The government doesn't produce anything, it can only take it from someone else, and then use it on someone else.

You are talking about the budget which is made up at the beginning of the year as a projection. It is true that the Bush administration did not include the supplemental war costs here. These figures in the chart, by contrast, are the actual totals for all spending and income and do include the war spending.

the deficit IS NOT the change in public debt. as i saw another poster point out, clinton had surpluses but added to the debt every year during his presidency. the public debt does not include transfer payments. the accounting system is much more complicated than people realize. on budget and off budget spending is included in the deficit, but non-budget spending is not. for example, we historically have had surpluses from the social security program. why is it going bankrupt? because we spend the surplus on something else but record it as if we used it to pay down the deficit. this is typical NON-budget spending that bush never included in his deficits, which is why his deficits dont even add to 60% of the debt that he added. with that said, obama will have added more to the public debt in 3 years than bush did in 8. im trying to learn more about the government's accounting principles, but it's much more complicated then just summing surpluses and deficits to arrive at a change in total public debt under a president.

As bad as this all is, I'm sure there's so much "off-budget" hidden away that we will never know of. On the positive side, with all the talk of 'sustainable'-you-name-it in the culture, we will be whacked in the face with the harsh reality that nobody wants to lend us the money.

I reject the two bars that indicate a surplus for 2000 and 2001. This is rewritten history by friends of the Clinton administration. It never happened. The U.S. federal debt went up every year including those two. Those data points are fictitious.

you can't just add deficits and surpluses to arrive at a a change in public debt, which does not include transfer payments (gross debt does, and is well above 20 trillion.) it is much more complicated than that, as the deficit includes on and off budget spending, but not non-budget spending. this is why bush's deficits dont add to his change in debt, and clintons surpluses minus his deficits dont add to the amount of debt he added. the accounting system is very complicated, there are 300 page books written on it so commoners like us can understand it. do some research, i know im going to.

You Republican's rewrite history at every turn. We were much better under Clinton and there was a surplus. Even rational Republicans do not argue that. Bush who ran huge debt, just like Reagan, the largest spender at over 23% debt over GDP, are your heroes and under them they ruin the economy. Now Obama takes over and things are starting to get better and it is driving you all crazy. I have many Republican friends and have never understood why they would ruin our country themselves just to try and say a democrat caused it. I am an American first and foremost and would never damage my country to prove a point. HOW DISGRACEFUL!!!!!

Well George yes there was a $230B surplus but what they don't show is the $246.5B Clinton borrowed from various government agencies. So when all is said and done there was no surplus but actually a deficit of $16.5B which Bush used up faster than any president in history, and added to that deficit to the tune of $700B which didn't include his special and emergency spending amounts for the wars. Now we have Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan who think they have the solution to all our problems. Unfortunately they will do the typical GOP solution to all our problems and borrow more and more at interest rates we can no longer tolerate, and will never be able to pay back. Or maybe Mr. Romney can just buy some more companies milk them for all they are worth and then lay everyone off. We could use those profits to pay off our national debt. What do you think George??

If the gummint used GAAP accounting, the picture would be far bleaker than the above.

Deficits are one thing – what is the picture of total unfunded liabilities based on the newly-bloated bureaucracy? As for our NYC friend – what was the spending for? All the new homes, applicances, autos, and home products for the returning GI's and families. Obama's spending is to build up gummint bloat – not even close.

GW Bush spending "frugal?" The War in IRAQT cost 1O billion a month! Bush League borrowed from Commie China for it, and now we owe China at least 1.2 trillion dollars! First time in US history that we borrowed for a WAR! If you couple that with the bush voodoo league tax cut, that would amount to another 2.8 trillion dollars. . Total equals nearly 4 trillion! Ofcourse Bush earmarked ,for 2009 (Obama came into office in 2009) trillions more just for the TARP funds/bailout for 2009. It is NOT fuzzy math to see that the vast majority of this @$%T storm came from the voodoo econ. of n the G.W. BUsh League.
P.S. had G.W. Bush gone after Bin Laden in 2002, and made it, eg. in Tora Bora, our central main prime directive, our War in Swould have ended by 2004 respectively. Iraq, ofcourse was a waste of 1.2 trillion dollars. had we .been more patient that dominose would have fell , as they are now in Tunisiaa, Egypt, Syria, Libya, etc.

The first bullet point lists Bush's 700 billion dollar blunder yet the chart shows a debt of 400 billion. What's up with that? For really shocking numbers add the Medicare debt to these spending sprees. That jumps the debt to $60 Trillion.

funny thing is , is that was the same thing said during, as of yet, the longest US War in history….the Vietnam War. Last time I checked it resulted in a deep recession, kinda like after 10 years of Iraq War. FDRs programs: of CCC, TVA, and general Gov. contracts, and Gov. programs like SSA , and Medicaid, and Medicare also helped to create jobs.

It killed lots of people who used to own property too, thus making property cheap. It also made us rich because all of Europes industry was destroyed, along with Japan's which made the US and Soviet Union the only industrialized nations, and thus super powers.

We have an exploding Elderly population. WE do o NOT have a COLD WAR w/ Soviet Union,nor do we need to spend as if we are still at Cold War. Even GOP Conservative and former Sec. D,EF. RObert nt Gates, and current CIA chief agrees that the Defense budget is Bloated

Rocky & NYC: The $1 trillion is new spending. It's in addition to whatever Bush was spending, on or off the books. I'm not a cheerleader for Bush, but no one can deny that government spending is making a significant jump in Obama's budget.

As for WWII getting us out of the Depression–it wasn't the spending that did it. It was the fact that FDR, suddenly realizing that he needed industry to fight a war, rolled back many of the controls that had been imposed on them over the previous ten years. Wars do not improve one's finances, as the past eight years ought to show. Wars drain resources from productive use. They do not produce wealth, they destroy it; and they destroy people, who are the source of all wealth. That's not to say they should never be fought–sometimes there is no choice–but war is never good for the economy.

Btw, the private sector did not start investing again until around 1953-4, well after the War and after the economy was showing continued growth. Gov't subsidies for housing and spending on infrastructure (roads, bridges, dams, etc) along with the GI Bill helped move the economy forward. Business responds primarily to DEMAND during periods of distress (Keynesian economics) as opposed to tax, interest rates, or regulatory restraints.

Rocky, let's also be clear, Obama included the costs of the Iraq war at the spending levels during the surge. This means that instead of including it at usual annual rate of $100 billion a year, he put it in at $200 a year as it was in the year of the surge. While he may only spend $100 billion on the war, he can send say $50 billion to some socialist waste and still claiming he is saving money as he didn't spend the whole $200 billion. This is partly why he is claiming his budget is saving money. He's lying, his administration admitted they have some dodgy accounting on the Iraq war costs.

Also, since the Iraq war is costing about $100 billion a year, how can it be the biggest costs we have? The cost of the Iraq war is dwarfed by Obamas spending, and that's without deducting the costs that would have been spend on the armed forces even if they were not in Iraq. Those costs don't go away when the war ends.

While Bush may not have put the cost in the budget, he still had to pay for it, either through taxes or by adding to the deficit, so while it may account for a difference in the budget, at the end of the day, the chart is still correct, and Bush still had to pay out the money, and despite doing so, he managed to keep hold of the budget (compared to President Teleprompter). Obama, trying to paint himself as honest by putting it in the budget, used it to lie and cheat some more money away from the taxpayer and into his own projects.

You are showing your own dishonesty in attempting to paint this as the reason that Obamas numbers are far worse when the real reason is simply that Obama is pouring gobs of money into his socialist programs.

WHAT is this ridiculous obsession with the teleprompter? Ronald Reagan was the one who introduced the its use- before that presidents used written notes. Every president has used it since then but you wingnuts snipe about Obama's use of it as if it were a personal failing. And if you think Bush managed to "keep hold of the budget" you must have been asleep for eight years. " He still had to pay for it?" That's the point- he DIDN'T pay for it. The costs were shoved onto the following administration, and if anyone takes the prize for lying it has to be Bush/Cheney for th staggering lie that was used as an excuse for the Iraq war in the first place. You also forget that the economy tanked on his watch, as a result of toxic deregulation- courtesy of Cheney- and it has been Republicans, not Democrats that have grown government for the last forty years. (And I won't even go into Bush/Cheney's Constitutional abuses.) http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3750
Note those are from conservative sources. http://www.cato.org/pubs/powersurge_healy_lynch.p…

Oh, and NYC, WWII brought us out of recession by drafting and killing thousands of men, as well as spending money on tangible assets like planes, guns and bullets, not by spending it on re-sodding lawns or building dog parks, the NEA, or investigating the pooping habits of the white tailed goat.

Obama is actually making Bush look good as far as speaking, intelligence and spending goes. At least he knew how to prevent the crappy economy of the last few years from plummeting to earth. Perhaps Obama should go get some advice.

George W. Bush ruined the economy with his adjustable rate mortgages…and his free trade crap…sending work and manufacturing over seas is the worst thing any president could do…taking away American jobs takes away American spending…and buying more American product would keep more people working which in turn keeps people on top of their debts…

Adjustable rate morgages have been around since the 1970's, can't blame Bush for that. I took out a ARM in 1991 and converted to 15yr Conventional in 2003 when rates dropped to below 5%, my savings was $70K. Everyone should have listened to Perot, NAFTA sent jobs out of the country faster than anything and increased illegal immigration. NAFTA supported and championed by CLINTON.

Obama just inherited all these from the Bush administration hid from everyone all these problems to the very last minute….He should be put to trial for economic sabotage

Just go back to the inauguration day and see how Bush's facial expressions summed it all up. He was dead scared as far as i'm concerned for he knew that his mistakes(?) will make him the worst President the US ever had…

Don't blame Obama for spending too much, blame his predecessor or the people behind the US Economic collapse. Obama had to do something that he never saw coming when he took office. At least he's doing something. What are you doing America? Getting huge bonuses? losing your houses, jobs? Is that the American spirit?

What Obama inherited pales in comparison to what he himself has done to this economy. Obama HAD to spend what he did? To accomplish what? That was as much of a falure as he is as a president. He's been the most devisive, imperious, narcisist ever to hold the office. He has cultivated class warfare even further and his socialist ideas will never fly in a country where most of the people are moderate conservatives. Yes, that is true. You are in a minority. Your thinking and lack of knowledge of the issues is quite typical of people who are in denial about how awful this admin's policies are.

"Lets please clear up part of the record. The biggest expense of the government by far is the department of defense. The costs of the multiple wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been huge"

Let's please clear up the record a little more. You're wrong. First, Social Security is the U.S. government's biggest annual expense, not the DoD. Second, each one of the bailout/stimulus plans individually exceeded the DoD annual expenditures (including the costs of the wars.) Third, each of those bills exceeded the ENTIRE COST of the war in Iraq so far (which sits around $650 billion.) Even with a conservatively estimated shortfall of $1.75 trillion for FY '09, that's almost 3 times the entire war in just one year. The war is only a relatively small part of what was added to the national debt under Bush and it's well less than what Obama will add in his first year alone. By the way, Obama's promisd additions to the debt already eclipse the entire amount added to it under Bush's 8 years (and before you pull out the "Obama inherited a recession" crap, so did Bush.)

"I just felt a need to point out that current spending is significantly less than the 20-40% of GDP spent during WWII."

And I just felt the need to point out that no, it isn't. U.S. GDP is ~$14.2 trillion. Obama's proposed budget is $3.5+ trillion, not even counting the bailouts/stimuli. That's 24.6% before counting the other multiple trillions authorized for bailouts/stimuli. The U.S. gov't will easily spend 30% of GDP in 2009, if not closer to 40%. Typical for the U.S. is more like 18-20%. 40% is more typical of countries like France (you know, the ones that see unemployment numbers like we have now in good years.)

"And for those who believe WII brought us out of the Great Depression, how did it do that? Spending."

A gain that was artificial and temporary. Yes, technically speaking, the GDP rose, but it wasn't on goods that increased quality of life (though they increased the length of some and decreased the length of others.) The increase in production output was primarily for goods needed for the war. The drop in unemployment had a lot to do with the millions that were drafted as well as those put to work stateside producing weapons. However, there was no real gain in consumer spending, etc. until after the war. Not too many consumers were buying the B-17 Flying Fortresses or Sherman tanks that accounted for the increase in GDP. Real recovery to consumers didn't come until the rapid transition towards private industry after the war.

"Where in the Washington Post chart did the $700 billion in TARP funds get allocated to? ‘08 or ‘09?"

I would assume neither, since it isn't part of the budget. If it were it one, I would hope that it would be '09, considering FY '09 started Oct 1, 2008.

Republicans are sad you elected a president who had the worst presidential rating of any president. Also, Bush was the commander and chief which means he was in command when we were attacked by terrorist on 911. That's your president and couldn't even protect us. So sad you elected a drunk and you can't even admit you voted him office I glad I didn't neither election. Furthermore, lets not get started on Catrina and the people who suffered cause of his poor leadership.

The other thing which is misleading is that government tax revenues are way way down (due to the poor economy which began last year) which contributes to this number in a big way. In fact I'd venture to say it's the main reason this number looks so large

Now, it's one thing to argue that when we know tax revenues are going to be down, maybe we shouldn't spend as much. And this may be correct. But I rarely see the revenue side of the puzzle discussed, only gripes about the spending. The spending has been on the increase for years now.

Leaving that aside, I also wonder how much of the first year deficit is legacy.

Yes, let's cut military funding because the defense of our country is absolutely "out of control" spending. Nevermind that we're spending billions to bail out banks and financial institutions that helped put us in this mess in the first place. Oh, and let's not forget all of those pet projects that our trusted leaders have inserted in to the stimulus package. That's not at all out of control. But the military? PSH!! And, about all of the Bush blaming (some of it justified), let us not forget that the lending practices that began this decent started with the CLINTON ADMINISTRATION. So be sure to give credit where credit is due.

[…] Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures » The Foundry President Bush created a Medicare drug entitle­ment that will cost an estimated $800 billion in its first decade. President Obama has proposed a $634 billion down payment on a new govern­ment health care fund. […]

Boise Rocky: There is a very old saying that is now applicable to America: "No-one fights the top dog-until he's grown old and feeble." For the past 20+ years, America has been the top dog; but now, we are losing that strength. As a military brat, where both my parents served for 20+ years and are now retired, and several acquaintances I know are working jobs as top civilian defense contractors (a.k.a., they have insights into the defense budget that no-one else has), I feel safe in saying that you are a flaming nut. If you had bothered to actually look past the surface instead of begging for, and eating, the leftist propaganda crap the MSM tries to force-feed us, you would have noticed that many of the people who hate us now have technology, in various military fields, that is fully the equal or SUPERIOR of American tech. Both China and Russia have new jet fighter/bomber models that are fully the equal of the F-15. Iran is rapidly coming up to speed with new kinds of missiles, small arms, body armor, and other artillery/guerilla weapons and equipment. For God's sake, Mexican drug smugglers now have various kinds of hand grenades, armour-piercing HE rounds, high-quality body armor, and specialised training in law/customs/police evasion (in short, they are now mercenary, drug-focused armies instead of smugglers).

America has had military tech superiority for so long that we have forgotten it is not a God-given right; if we want to keep ourselves alive, we need to spend that money to keep our tech a cut above the rest. Of course we are spending a lot of money on defense-it's the only !@#$%^& way America going to stay alive, you idiot!

Unfortunately, Obama and his mess of incompetents have decided that it costs too much to keep our soldiers alive. Example; all the current military analysts agree that we HAVE to replace the old F-15's with F-22's in order to maintain air superiority, the defining factor of modern warfare-specifically, we need at least 381 f-22's, with replacement parts for 50-80. Obama has only authorized 183, with replacement parts for 20.

In short, Obama is saying that Americans are too costly to be kept alive. He also seems to hold an active contempt for the military, not a good trait in a Commander-In-Chief: his act of only authorizing 183 F-22's is the money equivalent of saying, "Fine, I'll give these whinos their fancy toys in the hopes that they will shut up."

It would seem, given his recent actions, that Obama is a delusional, narcissistic jerk who is so wrapped up in details, he's incapable of any form of perception.

Finally, Boise Rocky, the troops are only being pulled out of Iraq because they are now being sent to Afghanistan. If you had paid attention, you wouldn't have made that horsehockey statement about how we'll now see reduced spending because we pulled the troops out.

Oh, and NYC: you are correct that WWII brought us out of the GD by spending. However, the WWII spending was focused on things like infrastructure-business investments; you may not have seen the numbers and names for the exact recipients of Obama's stimulus package, but I have-only about 10% of the money was given to non-Democratic, non-liberal people and organizations. The rest was "donated" to people and organizations who had given money to the Democratic candidates of the 2008 elections. Also, Obama himself was the personal, direct recipient of 7.7 million of that stimulus money; Hillary Clinton was the personal recipient of 30+ million; and Obama's Chief Intelligence Offer was recently raided by the FBI; the FBI found tens of thousands of dollars in his house, bribe money THAT HAD COME OUT OF THE STIMULUS BILL MONEY.

Not only is Obama incompetent, it also seems he's a liar and a hypocrite; I seem to recall some promises like "Neither I nor my administration will accept any pork money".

America is starting to die, and not enough people choose to see it-even fewer choose to fix it.

To Rocky: Absolutely unclear on your comment. The 2008 budget shows social security, not defense, is our #1 line item. Looking at the Obama proposal, you see defense spending falling, and the "other" category rising, over the next four years.

Obama's projections also include a huge carbon tax. Without it another half a trillion in debt gets added in to this ugly picture.

One person/administration is not the cause, they just take over the problems from before and add to them. All are sure they know the best way to handle things, but when they get there realize there isnt much they can do. You cannot blame Obama for 50 years of bad management. But he is not the Messiah and cannot fix it either. There is only one government that can fix anything and everything, It is NOT human, greedy, self serving or oppressive, and is not run by imperfect humans.

I swear you can lead a Conservative to the facts, you just can't get them to think!

Look at the pictures and read the story!! Notice W came into office with a Budget Surplus??? W like Reagan and his Dad before him ALL spent more and accumulated more deficit than all the Presidents before them combined!!

W and Cheney are both on record stating "Reagan proved deficits don't matter."

W's Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil quit his post as a result of this spend like a crazy man GOP mentality that evolved through Reagan.

Yet with a Democrat in office we were able to eliminate the deficit spending that is so a part of the GOP "do as I say not as I do" platform.

Now Obama walks in and has to address the worst Economy assumed since the Depression and the America haters come out hoping for failure???

So when Reagan was inaugurated and the Stock Market plummeted the next day, were you all making up racist names for him? When it took a full year for the market to recover were you using racist pet names for him?

When Reagan spent more than all previous Presidents combined to jump start the Economy were you all attacking him with racist pet names? When it took almost 4 years for the Economy to recover, were you all attacking him with racist pet names?

If you want to know who is responsible for this mess, look in the mirror and remember that you have been voting for a party that talks the virulent talk but stays away from walking the walk.

I have no racist pet names for Obama. I do have serious contempt for people like you that can not face the current events. Always have to rale on the republicans with no knowledge of what your own party is doing. You have a serious misconception about deficit spending – please refer to the US Treasury's report regarding who was involved in our current debt. The dems can share plenty of blame. How did the housing crisis come into being? Carter's "Community Reinvestment Act" in the 70's is directly to blame for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Even Barney Frank had to acknowledge "We were wrong" Also, do you have any clue as to how much more Obama has contributed to our national debt compared to Bush? Of course not, don't let any facts get in the way of your belief system…

Interesting presentation. Another interesting presentation would be to take the money spent by the previous administration, all of it mind you, include the costs of private contractors in Iraq, covert operations etc, and add it into the last admins budget. We should also look at Obama's budget, and take some of the infrastructure spending that has been made a high priority, and spread some of it out over the last 8 years, when it should have been spent (levee's, schools, alternative energy. etc. We would be looking at an entirely different picture on both sides of the coin. One of my history professors used to say, "There are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics"

Are you people forgetting that YOU elected all the critters in Congress that create these lovely plans? When was the last time you told your elected representative what you thought? Do you even know who they are?

This isn't the time to argue, it's time to step up to your responsibilities and take back your power as a citizen. That's the only hope we have left.

"And for those who believe WII brought us out of the Great Depression, how did it do that? Spending"

Yeah, but the difference is, after the war, all of new govt employees, aka "soldiers", and the vast majority of defense contractors were sent home to get jobs or find other productive things to do with their new factories. When does that happen with Obama's spending? Answer, never. He is creating a permanent class of govt employees in the hopes of creating a permanent majority.

Not to mention the economic benefits of winning a war, which are absent here too. I think we are embarking on a reverse WWII, whe Europe and the Euro are going to come out on top, and we are going to be poorer people for decades.

Yeah, right. Keep believing what the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation puts out as fact. Fact: Obama has inherited the biggest deficit of any president in American history. (Adjusted for real dollars, and inflation.)Obama must now prime the pump, to get us out of a multi-pronged mess left over from the Bush crowd, and seven years of Repub control. They chose to look the other way and ignore the financial chicanery going on right in front of them, while the income gap between the very wealthy, and real workers, grew to unprecedented levels. Their only prescription for every ill: take two tax-cuts for those already wealthy, and call me in the morning. The income gap is one trend that the corporations, and conservatives, see no problem with. However, without an economically viable, job-working, spending middle class, there can be no economic recovery. Look—Bush and the Repubs would not even acknowledge that America was in a recession until about five months ago. Remember this?…"The fundamentals of the economy are strong". This falsehood was flouted by the Bush Administration, Republicans, and conservative pundits throughout the news media, while we were actually headed over the abyss. The surest way to insure our nation plunges into the worst depression we have ever seen, is to keep listening to the propaganda spewing conservative cranks. It was the ultra "free market" ideologies of groups like the American Heritage Foundation, that got us into this mess. No matter how you skew the graphs, or the facts, Bush never included the military budgets in his spending projections. Obama is including those expenditures. It is also important to differentiate between the cost of the Iraq/Afghanistan wars, and the Pentagon budgets. (Two very different budgets, and different costs.). Beware of those that would like to re-write history. FDR saved our hind-ends. And, he did so while fighting two wars. People approved of what FDR was doing, because he was elected three times. Now, let's see…What was going on before FDR took office? Hmmm….Economically, it looks a heck of a lot like what was going on before Obama took office. Keep listening to the conservative, "free market' idealogues, and we'll be back to Hooverville, or worse. Worried about deficits? Who is'nt?! But, how will we ever pay down debt in America, if we can't get our spiralling economy going again? Nothing says misery like NO JOBS, and no hope. Conservatives always cry crockadile tears over deficits. Everytime good government agencies are cut, (Say, for instance, FEMA, Medicare, education, and for that matter, the local fire dept.) that can go to more tax breaks for those already wealthy, and more tax cuts for mega corporations. Wise up!

The only thing I'm going to comment on is your out look on the tax cuts… I make less than 20,000 a year, you got it? Less than 20,000, and i completely agree to them… Do you realize that the top 1% of the public(the people that make the most money) pay more in taxes than the entire bottom 95% ALL COMBINED? How is that right? The wealthy got wealthy bc they worked hard to get there, the same opportunities that they have, you and I have as well.. Why should they have to support the rest if us from the government redistdributing their wealth… They earned it an they are the people that put Americans to work… They deserve the tax breaks, ever heard of the fair tax?? If the govment would approve the fair tax, and make it 11% for the tax rate at which ALL levels of wealth would pay, it would increase the tax revenue, and help the economy, with the added bonus of being fair, no longer would u have to worry about losing your money to taxes when you finally do make it big….

The US Constitution seperates States responsibilities from Federal responsibilities. One of the few responsibilities of the federal government is defense. Social issues like welfare, social security, health care, etc are not in the pervue of either the states or the federal government. When congress and the president cut spending on defense and increase spending on social programs, they are stepping on the toes of those who are responsible for said programs.

President Obama needs to pay attention to what he is responsible for, and leave the economy to those who really affect it: the consumers and business owners.

Now, make a chart using the same numbers, comparing a Democratic-controlled Congress to a Republican-controlled Congress. Meanwhile, conservatives should find a polite way to tell their Democrat freinds,"…told ya so." It'll come in handy in the next several years.

By our constitution, the business of the federal government is to maintain a stranding army(armed forces), make international treats and policies(by the president for approval by the senate), regulate tariffs(international trade), print a uniform currency(based on the gold and silver standards), and regulate interstate commerce.

The latter is the problem. The interstate commerce law was never intended to be used for social engineering(public(government)schools, busing, healthcare, public housing,food stamp, etc), nor wealth distribution(welfare,etc).

The main purpose was to keep states going to war with each other for setting up tax booths(as with our national borders with Mexico and Canada) at their borders to collect all kinds of user taxes from businessmen trying to conduct business in a third state.

The founding fathers never intended us to be a welfare/socialist state, but one of "life, liberty, and the pursue of happiness" through the sweat of our brow, entrepeurship, and limited interference by the government. There should be no federal governmental social agenda. If a state wants it, it's their business.

Therefore we need to demand that the Interstate Commerce law go back to its original intent and remove the unethical and dangerously abusive laws that limit our liberties as free citizens.

Like Reagan, I believe the US government should be governed by a balanced budget and a line-item veto for the president. I have also come to the conclusion of no amendment be added to a bill unless it is fully debated, especially add-on "pork bill amendments". The numbers speak for themselves. Batuimus

[…] on our children and their children can be easily imagined. As the Heritage Foundation points out, this is a completely bi-partisan disaster. Politicians have acted like teen-agers with stolen credit cards for far too long. However this […]

"The Commerce Department said Wednesday that orders for durable goods — manufactured products expected to last at least three years — increased 3.4 percent last month, much better than the 2 percent fall economists expected."

This is either the result of the natural cycle of a recession, or it is because of something Pres. Bush did. The Dems say this is still Bush's economy, but you then claim that it is Obama's recovery. SORRY, YOU CANNOT HAVE IT BOTH WAYS. And besides, the stimulus bill recently passed has NOT even been implemented.

"YES in the midst of all this rhetoric and subjectivity, we see the first advance in durable goods orders in 14 months!! Way back into the W administration when the economy was tanking!!"

So, like I said before, it must have been something Bush did.

"It didn’t start the day Obama was inaugurated, it started a full year before he took office!!"

No it didn't. If we are actually starting to come out of this recession, it will NOT have been because of Obama. As difficult as it is for you to admit it, we WERE in a recession when Bush first took office. There was NOT a surplus when Bush took office.

"In the midst of all this rhetoric and anti American sentiment flowing from the Conservatives, the Market had it’s largest 2 week gain in 70 years and durable goods orders and home starts are on the rise."

Let me say it again . . . THANK YOU PRESIDENT BUSH. It is absolutely impossible for Obama to have been responsible for the "recovery" you seem to think we are in.

Of course in my case I lost about 20% of the money I invested in my 401k money in 2000. (You know, in that wonderful Clinton economy. What was even more wonderful is the place I worked for didn't do matching funds because they were in the toilet. I know it's an annecdote but not everything was peachy.)

"Most of the ‘09 deficit is also Bush’s, since it’s his budget until October 1 (with the exception of the stimulus money being spent this year)."

You guys can say this all you want, but it doesn't make it true. Have you asked yourself why the budget was not voted on last year? Let me tell you. Much of what is in the budget bill for 2008 (just passed) was in the bill last year. President Bush told Congress (Dem controlled) that if it made it to his desk, he would veto it. Pelosi decided at that point to hold it over knowing in her mind that she would have a Democrat as President and she would be able to get all she ever wanted passed.

So . . . IT WAS NOT BUSH'S BILL, as much as you folks continue to say. Continually repeating a lie does not make it true.

And, FY 2009 began… in October 2008. Under… *gasp* President Bush. Bush ran a deficit to fund an unnecessary war. Now, the economy is in the tank. And, short run, if our country is to be saved (or, at least, its banking system and finances), we have to accept horrendous deficits. If we are to move forward with real investment in the future, we have to accept some short- to mid-term deficits to get the economy GROWING again. Sure, these deficits are ugly. But CONSIDER THE ALTERNATIVE. What does our country look like without these expenditures? Easily double-digit unemployment. Probably for years. Little opportunity for leadership in technologically driven manufacturing. No health care safety net and rapidly rising costs for those with insurance. So, yes, tough decisions have to be made. And, it seems like the appropriate choice is pretty clear if we want to have a strong future as a nation.

[…] Democrats constantly derided the Bush administration for their reckless fiscal irresponsibility, this graph clearly shows that the federal budget deficit under the Obama administration will be many times […]

So Obama inherited debit from Bush and He from Clinton….and on and on back to Washington and the revolution. When is someone going to stop blaming the past administration and stop borrowing from the future generations. You cannot pay your Visa with Master Charge and Master Charge with American Express. You will never get out of debit only go deeper in debit.

We need a balanced budget amendment. If you haven't got it you cannot spend it. I know that will require tightening our belts and doing without many of our entitlements and comforts. The government was never intended to take care of us from cradle to the grave. Each of us must take responsibility for our own actions and decisions. The right to "pursue happiness" is no guarantee that we all will attain that goal.

Orders to U.S. factories for big-ticket manufactured goods and new homes sales both rose unexpectedly in February.

The Commerce Department said Wednesday that orders for durable goods — manufactured products expected to last at least three years — increased 3.4 percent last month, much better than the 2 percent fall economists expected.

It was the first advance after a record six straight declines and the strongest one-month gain in 14 months.

YES in the midst of all this rhetoric and subjectivity, we see the first advance in durable goods orders in 14 months!! Way back into the W administration when the economy was tanking!!

It didn’t start the day Obama was inaugurated, it started a full year before he took office!!

In the midst of all this rhetoric and anti American sentiment flowing from the Conservatives, the Market had it’s largest 2 week gain in 70 years and durable goods orders and home starts are on the rise.

So you Cons just keep up your childish rhetoric, the rest of us are going to wash off the stench of 8 years of W and get this Country back to where it was financially and internationally when Clinton handed over the reigns to W.

Umm, on stating the deficits included the wars… they didn't. The wars were not included in the deficit.

Unless you could of course explain how people didn't know how much the war actually cost at the time if they could have just looked at the budget, the deficit, and done the simple math. Unfortunately all of the numbers were skewed, and there's no way you can change simple fact, especially simple facts of such huge magnitude.

Would appear to me that we need more than Tea Parties. Each and every day the O administration gets more and more bold about their road to Marxism and Socialism. Just when you think you can't be more shocked – the O administration proves that's simply not true.

Yesterday's "suggestion" that Geithner be allowed to take control of ANY business that "jeopardized" the US Economy was a flat out grab for power that we've never even imagined before. And the liberals were all up in arms over the US Govt listening into a few phone calls that originated overseas!

[…] 25, 2009 · No Comments So the Bush deficits were in decline and the new guy is going to blow them back up to levels never s… Obama is going to bankrupt and ruin this country at this rate, nothing Bush did comes close to this […]

Bush spending doubled national debt from $5 trillion to more than $10 trillion in eight years of budgets. This averages more than $600 billion/year for eight years. The chart does not accurately reflect this debt increase. The chart does not accurately reflect this increase which calls into question the reliability of the entire data set.

Beyond a handful of liberals dutifully suggesting that the Bush years don't include war spending and the Obama figures do… is there a definitive source for that? I'll gladly accept it as true, you know, with a good source. No offense.

Seems everyone is looking at this picture wrong. It is not a condemnation of President Obama's budget deficit. It is a picture of a government gone wild with spending, starting with Bush and a slight Republican majority Congress. The Democratic equality and then majority in the Senate started in 2004, the House went to a Democratic majority in 2006 and even further in 2008.

While the President recommends a budget and can veto a budget, CONGRESS writes the laws that authorizes the budget.

As a conservative, I was not pleased with a lack of Republican Congressional support for President Bush's attempt to get Social Security reorganized to become solvent. I was not pleased with the passing of a new entitlement program cover prescription drugs during his Presidency.

But it is time to stop looking backwards, as President Obama so often lectured during the campaign, and look to the future. The government should do, just as I am doing in my personal budget, cut spending and get my financial house in order.

As far as I am concerned, the Democratic Congress owns the 2008 deficit and, if they pass the current Obama budget, he and they own that too, with all it's deficits.

Dan makes an on-point comment about tax revenues. They’re going to be down based on 2008 earnings and down even further based on 2009 earnings. Many of those whom Obama enjoys categorizing as “the rich” are now jobless or have taken pay cuts and their incomes from dividends and interest payments have decreased. And of course, there are fewer and fewer bonuses from which to reap taxes! Would anticipate that contributions to charities will drop, thanks to Obama’s plan, and who is going to pick up the slack there? More federal entitlement programs?

Listening to shawn he directed me to your Foundation. Thanks to him and your work those sleezes would have already worked their magic.
How do I join your foundation? We need someone or enity to talk to. I looked around to see who I cold contact to tell of my anger at washington and the congress and the house. They should stop this money give away immediately! The budget of Housein has not been passed yet. If any one voting for his budget should be pointed out to be a traitor because he is trying to give all our values of this land I love to the United Nations. The hand writing is on the wall. He has all or most all our money to play with under the guise of getting the economy moving again. What about all that money he has given those banks, still nothing moving. Geiger works for Obama so when he was asked yesterday he told the congesswoman No but today at the meeting he said it would not be a bad Idea to change our currancy to world currancy. NNNNOOO!!! This guy Obama is a loser. He is trying to convince the Congress and House to hurry up and give him all this power. I often think of Hitler when I look at him. Tall,slim,goodlooking,and a gift for the spoken work to make people do what his voice wants them to. And to top it off, there is not any body to stop him. They all want to be a part of this giant agena. Sen Dodd should be called before Congress about his act. He didn’t just walk in pick up the bill someone left on the table,made his additions so all those people at AIG could get their bonuses. I wounder how much kickback he was supposed to get over that. I would say that Peosee and Mr B was standing right there beside him. Thank you for letting me get this of my chess, but it isn’t going away until that @#%$*#@ is Impeached!Done,glenndonna@att.net

I watched Mr. Obama's speach the other night, and nothing has changed! Asked a direct question and he dances. When giving an explaination, feathers come out his mouth. When giving comparisons, his 'poop' smells just like anyone else's 'poop'!

[…] Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in PicturesPresident Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. The Washington Post has a great graphic which helps put President Obama’s budget deficits in context of President Bush’s. […]

When will people learn that anything done now will effect us in 10 years, and anything done 10 years ago will effect us now? The economy doesnt react on a dime, it takes time. The housing market crash, caused 10 years ago by policy made then. So to think that Obama or Bush caused any of this is probably wrong. As for Obama spending more then Bush, the only way to know for sure is to do the research yourself and stop trusting everything you hear and read. The best source of information is the person who was in charge or is in charge now. Ask them yourself, if you have the courage.

On September 30, 1999, a prophetic New York Times article included this early warning: “Fannie Mae has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people.” The article, recognizing the risks of this policy, warns:”In moving…into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporations may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.

In other words, the bright idea of flooding our credit markets with mortgage loans to people who couldn’t afford them was the brain-child of the Clinton administration – George Bush happened to be the governor of Texas at the time.

Five years later, during a 2004 Congressional hearing on improvement to regulatory structures for Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae, Democrat congressmen poo-poo a regulator from the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (“Oh-Fey-Oh”) who is recommending immediate new regulations to guarantee against a future calamity. Democrats refuse to allow the consideration of more regulations. Afterwards, Bill Clinton is shown stating this: “The responsibility Democrats have is resisting efforts by Republicans in Congress and by me to put some standards and tighten up a little bit on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

On September 18, 2008, an interim CEO of Fannie Mae promises the Congressional Black Caucus that “Fannie Mae is determined to keep tearing down the barriers to deliver on the American Dream.” In other words, he promises no let-up in issuing more and more sub-prime loans to people who cannot afford them.

Google (including quotes) “Blog: Fannie Mae and Congressional Dems”

On September 25, 2008, Michelle Bachmann presents a succinct wrap-up of the genesis of today’s world-wide financial catastrophe.

Google (including quotes) “Bachmann: How Did We Get Into This Mess? “

The Obama bunch did NOT “inherit” this calamity. It is a matter of public record that THEY CAUSED IT while successfully blocking all efforts (even those of our previous Democratic president) to prevent it!

We are now facing the likelihood of an unprecedented catastrophe in world-wide financial markets. In the U.S., it’s time for the 8-year long hissy-fit temper tantrum on the left in response to the failure of Al Gore’s bid to be president finally to be put to bed. Citizens should forgo their pleasure of repeating made-up attacks at either party, and instead make a serious effort to discover the actual facts, and work to pull together, not split apart, the citizens of this country. We are all going to need each other in the not-so-distant future.

Granted war is never a good thing but when they bring it to our soil, we must defend our selfs. We are now the laughing stock of the world due in part to the knot heads that are running the country. Other countries are tell Obama to slow down but he's on a power grab and want's sociallism in this country, and big HUGE GOVERMENT s we can all stop paying our house payments. The great one will save us all. Actually he's sending strait to hell

The defense budget, including the money spent in Afghanistan and Iraq, is a pittance compared to the money spent on entitlement programs (ie – social security, welfare, etc.), which make up 60% of our total annual budget.

Fellow Michiganders on this post…allow me to educate you. The only job the federal government can create is a government job. You and I pay the salary for this government job which produces nothing, and worse, takes a job away from the private sector. Every tax dollar Washington spends is one less dollar in the private sector. By further stifling the private sector, which is what the disputed budget chart shows, Obama is not helping you or me. Wise up and fight the spending. This monsterous blunder won't do what they say it will.

[…] Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures President Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. The Washington Post has a great graphic which helps put President Obama’s budget deficits in context of President Bush’s. […]

In saying that Bush and Obama share the responsibility for the 2009 budget, you forget one thing. Congress bypassed Bush on the issue by not passing its real budget until Obama got in office. Slam the man for the things he screwed up, but the 2009 budget isn't one of them.

What I don't understand is why people vote for their own demise. We knew this was going to happen but all you heard, "Everyone is mad at the Republicans so this is a way to get back at them… maybe this will be a lesson to them." Yeah, whoever voted for the President sure taught them a lesson. Actually, they taught their kids a lesson: You will be in debt for life because I was such a genius to vote for the guy. Great Job!

So what did we learn people? C'mon… what did we learn??? When you vote on feelings and trying "to set history" rather than voting on experienced candidates who have done something in their lives further more than just writing a book… you get this.

And stop telling me you inherited the budget and that you had no part of it! Of course you did. You were a Senator, remember?! You were on the filibuster list that Chris Dodd's used to threaten the Chairmen of the Committee should the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005 come into the Senate. Yeah, but you didn't have anything to do with the current problem. Thanks, but I spit the Kool Aid out during the Bush Administration.

What I find hilarious is that this President is so gung ho about controlling everything, why didn't he decide to control things before?

I hear all of you guys and women speaking about whose fault it is for the debt, whose spending how much and you guys seem to be pretty upset. Well, I would say that people here who are liberal or all the way to the left who are on this website should be glad that they have just implaced, if they voted for him, President Obama into power because know he's going to spend all of your money! Oh, but wait, there is no money! He's using money from your great-great-great-great grand children to fix the problem that he or former President Bush didn't need to fix. They should have just let the markets figure out the problem instead. Now I also hear about people talking about WW2 on this website and how we spent money to get us out of the Great Depression. History Lesson for you guys. We had no money to spend during the time in Great Depression. War started and soon America went into the war. That created jobs for many Americans. That then gave the govt. a source of income to use. Another source of income that they used was war bonds. In the end of this history lesson, I hope you learned two things; One, the govt. actually sold a product to earn money; and Two, we actually used money that we had at the time. There is one thing though that is good about Obama. He cares about education and by education we can learn a very important lesson stated by former President Theodore Roosevelt" If you know your history, then you know your future." Know about this debt thing again. A friend of mine once told me you can't compare pumpkins to apples because they're two complete different things. It's like this topic. Bush's spending and defecit to Obama's spending and defecit. They're two complete different things. President Obama is having a hard time right now with this crisis and economic freefall. Former President Bush dealt with war on terror, beginnings of a crisis, and a lot more. The two presidents had to go through different things in their presidency so you really can't compare the two. They're not in the exact situation and coming with different solutions. You can't compare the two together.I guess that is all for now. I'll talk another time.

Folks, we should not be surprised here. Obama came to the table with no management experience worthy of a Board for any major corporation in our country, let alone the largest corporation in the world. We see precisely what he campaigned on: rhetoric, and more rhetoric. All he knows how to do is campaign and make the rounds, as evidenced by his (lack of) executive leadership skills. So, let's stop bickering about what he's doing for goodness' sake, he's doing exactly what we said he was going to do during the election season, he's living up to our expectations. The thing to do now is point out this fact, and begin campaigning *for* his replacement rather than only against him.

And after WWII we were the only nation left with an intact manufacturing infrastructure that allowed us to become the "manufacturer to the world" for the next 10 – 15 years, rebuild our economy, and pay down our debt. We have no manufacturing base now….and everything we're doing will assure that continues.

[…] Let’s put this all in perspective… “President Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. The Washington Post has a great graphic which helps put President Obama’s budget deficits in context of President Bush’s.” Source: Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures » The Foundry […]

Look at the graph and read the update and clarifications again. The graph shows the actual numbers of the Bush Administration when he left office and the planned estimate of Obama. Reason being is that Bush and Obama both share the numbers of FY 2009. This is why the accounting is planned for 2009 forward.

From what I'm seeing is that people are looking at this as Bush vs Obama rather than being "outside the parties". Start researching and looking at both objectively vs. subjectively. From what has happened in the last 60 days, would you suspect that there has been more spending from Obama than Bush. Of course. So we don't need a picture to tell anything we don't already know. Both are responsible for spending a lot. But if you're implying that Bush’s Administration deficit would surpass Obama's Administration Future Deficit (after hearing what has happened in the last 60 days)… I guess our discussion would have to stop here, because I can’t talk to you.

But, in all truth, it's the Congress that does pretty much everything. They are the ones who have the power to tax and spend (according to the US Constitution). From the last 60 days and the amount of fascism and narcissism I’ve seen, there seems to be no Constitution. But from what I'm gathering you want to talk about parties so I thought I'd leave this little tidbit regarding the last couple of years:

But you don’t here about this stuff in the Media. So what do people look at? They look at administrations. Pretty pathetic. The President has one Pen, but Congress has many. It’s time to become an Independent and start looking at things objectively. They’re both screwed up (Republicans and Democrats).

[…] Obama also doesn’t mention, and then dissembles when asked about it, that after his first term — in the so-called out years — his deficit numbers start rising even more precipitously, to some $1.2 trillion — almost the level of FY 2009. All one really needs to do to understand Obama’s unconscionable plan to bankrupt America is to look at a simple chart comparing his deficits with those of President Bush, prepared by The Heritage Foundation: http://www.foundry.org/2009/03/24/bush-deficit-vs-obama-deficit-in-pictures. […]

Read the "UPDATE:" part. The war costs ARE included. The data is from the Washington Post.

"And for those who believe WII brought us out of the Great Depression, how did it do that? Spending."

Keynesians predicted that the private economy would go into a recession after WWII because the large government budget deficits would be eliminated and so many men would be returning from the war jobless. Instead, as government deficits receded, private consumption and investment boomed. Resources were no longer allocated to producing munitions and instead were devoted to production of typical consumer goods and services.

There is no evidence that the living conditions during WWII were better than the years before. War is hell, for any country. The only reason why the economy improved after was because deficits went down.

You are sucked into the GOP vs Dem argument. Our country needs to decide what philosophy we want ur leaders to follow.

We are hearing straw man arguments from both sides. The fact of the matter is we are all conservatives with our own money. Ever read "Who Really Gives"? Couple liberal harvard professors sliced and diced it every way they could, and libs are more than conservative, they are stingy with their time and money. Rather let the government do the work apparantly, yet hold themselves out as the party of the poor.

Some people think the issues of today are different, however, that is not true. Human nature has not really changed since recorded history and probably long before.

The philosophy set forth in the Bible and our constitution are the roadmap to peronal and national prosperity. Our founders warned of this very thing, and we have been self indulgent.

The hangover is coming, but Obama just ordered 10 trillion shots of tequila on my kids tab, so you may as well get one, eh comrades?

Amazing how for the last 8 years Democrats have screamed at the modest deficits Bush created like they were enslaving their generations of their ancestors despite Bush reducing the deficits in 3 of the last 4 years in office. Now that Obama is going to triple it, they are all nonchalant about any kind of deficit unless they can blame Bush for it.

Suck it up, you were warned what Obama was like, you were just too easy to fool. Even the folks you were so quick to quote as backing Obama during the campaign have changed their minds, instead illuminating his incompetence and dereliction of duty.

[…] us; it’s an eight-foot-long crap hero, the sheer stench of which is capable of making a man sick at 40 yards. And he’s still managed to talk a plurality of the public into chowing down on it. As Malcolm […]

Obama seems to have duped the people who voted for him. It is funny. Let us say that you have a huge credit card debt. How are you going to fix it? Oh I have a great Idea. Lets Spend more money and then borrow money from others to pay off this debt.

I have worked in the public for much of my working life and I can tell you that people with a chip on their shoulders or having a power-trip will fall and with that being said, Obama will fall along with his cabnet.

Its a shame that we all have to suffer financially for the rest of our lives. Yes Bush had his faults, but he spent wisely and I would rather see our money being spent for our freedom. Obama will spend our money to disarm this great Country and support food stamps at a cost of $20 billion. I don't see how food stamps will stimulate our economy.

They say Obama has an IQ of a high value, I'm not seeing it. Personally, I think the media just but that in so he would get votes for the sake of history, this man has no common sence.

This man has created a monster that effects our lives, our childrens lives and their childrens lives.

Also, why in the heck are they spending our money to control/stop all of us from planting our own fruits and fegetables. Did you know that if you plant such things, you are considered a farmer. They want to import our foods, bad idea!

Outside of having a power-trip, I don't see the reasoning behind all of this mans useless spending.

All of you Democrats wanted "change", you got it. Thank you vary much for voting for socialism, for being a one-sided cabnet and for destroying growth.

[…] is that the Obama administration owns the deficit problem. This graphic from the Heritage article, Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures, leaves no doubt in my mind who owns the deficit. Its too bad that John McCain did not win. My […]

"….the rest of us are going to wash off the stench of 8 years of W and get this Country back to where it was financially and internationally when Clinton handed over the reigns to W."

Yeah,right..you have a short memory,my friend,(or should I now call you Comrade?)

The only stench around here is the aroma of dead bodies deposited by Bill & Hill in their quest for absolute power.

How many people did they have murdered, or discredited, or abused by the IRS on their directive?

Or the stench of tainted monies delivered by the bag-man Gore?

Remember:the Ashram payoff; illegal funds by a sitting president,yes ILLEGAL according to the CONSTITUTION.

BTW: an ashram is a temple;usually Buddhist.

The stench of corruption/treason by way of the loopholes created by Clinton and company that gave missile technology to the Chinese, who undoubtedly have or will share with their allies or lackies e.g.:N.KOREA!!

Or the stench left behind by Jamie Garelick of the 911 Commission.

(btw,she's a DEMOCRAT)

Jamie got her payoff from the gov't agency making huge bonuses on the sub-prime mtgs….where was your outrage then?

Bush got his orders for sure; from the big boys who really run this dog & pony show, but so has Obama.

If you want the truth check out infowars.com..infowars.tv…additionaly

I'd suggest larouchepac.com.

Mr.Larouche warned of economic collapse in 1996…he was a candidate for POTUS…Bush Sr. had him jailed.

Doesn't Congress have say in what is spent? We all point to the President and either blame him or applaud him for what happened during his administration. We fail to point out that Congress is part of that too. President Bush had a Democratic Congress the past two years and yet everybody screams at how he spent the money. Didn't Congress help? By contrast some applaud President Clinton for reducing the deficit (actually in real accounting terms he never had a surplus during his administration). If I remember right Congress was controlled by the Republicans. Either way you look at it both parties are to blame for the spending. I am disatisfied with both.

[…] You can see the punchline coming from a mile away but that only makes the hypocrisy more glaring. This one’s too sweet to be buried in Headlines, especially in how it exposes the phoniness of MoveOn’s concern about “the children.” Burdening the next generation is very irresponsible indeed — unless we’re doing it to fund green jobs or whatever, in which case go ahead and just pile on the weight. […]

Well said! Youre name matches your point of view. Bush did have some mess, should we say dirt in the living room, your Idol wants to clean it, instead of just simply wiping it off, he bought from the grocery all the cleaning materials and not satisfied with it, got himself a nice load of Chips and Snacks and offered to buy the entire grocery including the land and the owner. Does not make sense, right?

Only half of the TARP money was spent in 2008. The other half is being spent by Obama in 2009. Obama is bankrupting America. When I first read the budget and saw that he is doubling foreign aid, enacting cap and trade, and raising taxes during a recession I knew we were in trouble.

The deficits are not just due to spending, they are due to a severe economic recession that has slashed government revenues. In addition, to keep our financial system from collapsing and leading to a depression, 100's of $billions in bailout money are being spent. This is Obama's fault? The current economic and financial fiasco all started on Bush's watch.

Finally, you link to an article that claims the Bush tax cuts were successful. They were not: Employment growth during Bush's 8 years was one of the worst in history. In real dollars, the stock markets went down, as did real wages. Labor force participation declined. GDP growth was anemic. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti…

We didn't just start out with a surplus, we entered with a deficit because of Bush, and what do republicans do? they blame Obama, and " President Bush tilted the income tax burden more toward upper-income taxpayers. President Obama would continue that trend." i don't see whats wrong with that i am in favor of progressive taxation. it seems republicans like to pass blame for the failures of Bush's era

First off, I voted for Obama because I thought his progressive tax ideas were a more fiscally responsible plan than the GOP alternative. So I am very unhappy with this budget.

That being said… Bush inherited a strong economy, with a modest budget surplus. He immediately stopped collecting tax money from the wealthy, and drove the budget into a large deficit. And the reasons he cited for his massive deficit? People who live in caves halfway across the world.

After 8 years of Bush wrecking the economy, Obama has inherited the worst economy in our lifetime. His spending is required (according to many experts at least) to prevent the collapse of the entire world's financial systems.

So to offer a straight comparison is I feel, somewhat disingenuous. These administrations aren't in a vacuum. Both can share the blame for the budget, both can share some part of any recovery, and both were and will continue to feel the effects of what Clinton did in office.

One president had huge budget increases that were quite literally driven by fear of cave-dwellers. Another president has had massive budget increases driven by economic collapse across the entire world.

[…] UPDATE: Many Obama defenders in the comments are claiming that the numbers above do not include spending on Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush years. They most certainly do. While Bush did fund the wars through emergency supplementals (not the regular budget process), that spending did not simply vanish. It is included in the numbers above. Also, some Obama defenders are claiming the graphic above represents biased Heritage Foundation numbers. While we stand behind the numbers we put out 100%, the numbers, and the graphic itself, above are from the Washington Post. We originally left out the link to WaPo. It has been now been added. Read full story… […]

Realist out of the Midwest talks of "good government" agencies like "education" among others being targeted by evil conservatives. He/she clearly hasn't been around during California's "stimulus plan" which has been going on for years now, with the result of destroying our once-4th most powerful economy on earth, by targeted over-taxation, over-regulation, etc. I speak as a one-time ardent democrat, artist and art teacher here in Sac as we call our town. I've seen, in schools, a wholesale waste beyond imagination which has resulted in massive destruction of our once-great education system here. Kids knowing just where the buckets are to catch the rain coming through the roof is casual. This is mild, very mild as an indicator, the much greater problem being the state mandating the destruction of truly great programs to be replaced by cheaper, useless non-functional, pc programs. In my district in a Sac burb, 1/3 of the graduates graduate OUTSIDE of our normal high schools. Every school board in the state is run out of Sacramento's giant buildings full of bureaucrats who control most of our abject edu-failures, mandated by edu-criminals at all levels of our corrupt, power-hungry Cal governments.

What's best for the kids isn't even in the equation, much less the answer. No amount of 'more money' can save this sickened monster, but more money can buy a lot of votes from my corrupt former party's functionaries, to keep the edu-criminals in business as long as other people's money flows.

Wherever my former party has control, education is destroyed, along with wrecking the economy, the family, the economy and the people's prosperity, except for criminals. Detroit's 47% illiteracy rate, vast crime, government corruption (jailed mayor), 10,000 unsolved homicides and huge 'government services sector' is emblematic of America's future under democrats.

Note the two key words "actual" and "projected". Bush wrecked our economy through reckless spending and complete lack of discipline (not to mention borrowing trillions from China and the Saudi's). It's going to take a minor miracle to recover from this mess, so I suggest people like you sit back and give this all time to work. The only way to get out of it, is to spend our way out of it to give our economy the kick-start it needs. So stop the whining and help us recover from the mess you supported.

Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid..all programs that help citizens to stay afloat in a country where money is the one God and anyone who doesn't make huge amounts somehow lacks morality.

What happens to the money from these programs? Does it go Swiss secret bank accounts? No, it's SPENT. Every dollar given to middle and lower income people –or spent on their behalf–goes to buy goods and services. If any is banked, it is loaned out again to people who want loans to buy houses, cars, etc….. talk about kick-starting the economy….!!!

So how come the good republican right wingers swallow the bunkum about these programs hurting the country and contributing to the downfall of the country?

And how come they manage to ignore the fact that the Democrats have not had control of congress in quite some time. Even 51 votes in the senate will not overcome a presidential veto.

Propagandists for the corporations and corporate right wing media have spouted garbage for so long that un-thinking people will accept any of it and think it's dessert.

And the hatefulness of the right wingers is so disgusting…many of them write as if they would be more comfortable living in Communist China or Taliban controlled Afghanistan….. When some 21st century Timothy McVeigh carries out some breathtakingly destructive act against our country, then we'll see who is proud of being a hate-monger……

[…] Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures President Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out,given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. The Washington Post has a great graphic which helps put President Obama’s budget deficits in context of President Bush’s. 60 days, 64 mistakes So many errors by President Obama, so little time. Maybe he should take a little time off. Fluke? Credit crisis was a heist Thanks to a complicit Congress, the reins were systematically loosened on the looters of the financial industry. And they’re still at it, looking for new plunder. O’S FOREIGN FAILURES […]

I believe we are near the final stage where the people learn they can vote themselves riches from the National Treasury, Change We Can Afford, Change We Need, Hope you have your garden all planted and plenty of barb wire to protect it.

I've read so many articles about Obama and his doing just the opposite of what he told the people he would do. 11 promises (or more by now) already broke.

Please go to WeThePeopleCongress.org to get enlightened on what's going to happen in the next few months. There is actually a real direction the WeThePeople Foundation has created. There will be an assembly of 150 delegates (3 from each state) that will assemble to give the people direction according to the Constitution. It doesn't get any better than this!

One of his promises, as was the case w/ Clinton was Universal Health Care. Check (while not perfect because it is w/o "Option" , it is a promise mostly fulfilled.
Also promised to end War in Iraq : 2.5 years into his Admin. troops are being radically downsized:check
Also promised to have a responsible and not reckless tax policy, y'know, the kind that workded during Clinton era? Unforutnately, the Grand OL Plutocrats have made that mpossible, at least until Nov. 2012.

[…] UPDATE: Many Obama defenders in the comments are claiming that the numbers above do not include spending on Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush years. They most certainly do. While Bush did fund the wars through emergency supplementals (not the regular budget process), that spending did not simply vanish. It is included in the numbers above. Also, some Obama defenders are claiming the graphic above represents biased Heritage Foundation numbers. While we stand behind the numbers we put out 100%, the numbers, and the graphic itself, above are from the Washington Post. We originally left out the link to WaPo. It has been now been added. Read full story… […]

Lacking any other feasible alternative, I refuse to pay for this insanity. What is the proper moral response to this? Stop paying income taxes altogether and risk prison time? Reduce my income dramatically and learn to barter? Move to another country knowing that as bad as it is here, it's worse elsewhere? I no longer believe the voting process will "change" anything, when we have a class of citizens with no vested interest in voting away their free money. Our government has willfully and arrogantly broken the only Social Contract is has with the citizens and the sovereign states, the Constitution. What are we to do when our own federal government is the largest criminal on the planet?

[…] in the Bush years ? e.g., the PorkBusters movement that Trent Lott became ?damn tired? of ? but this graphic may explain why people are more upset now. Things are really different now… Bush Deficit vs. […]

I guess that Government was too big during Katrina (FEMA), and also in Not regulating ENRON, Madoff, Tyco, World Com, Arthur Anderson, ad nauseum, or regulation of the banks? Or a tax system that returns our nation to the guilded age? Yes, our fingers do indeed twitch.

[…] of the Cuba Embargo? Are you a Rightwing Extremist, too? Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures Confirmed: The Obama DHS hit job on conservatives is real The Bush Six to Be Indicted The Practice […]

[…] of the Cuba Embargo? Are you a Rightwing Extremist, too? Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures Confirmed: The Obama DHS hit job on conservatives is real The Bush Six to Be Indicted The Practice […]

I am a conservative — but a huge reason for the difference is the Bush numbers do not include: SOCIAL SECURITY, IRAQ WAR, FEDERAL TRUST IOUs — which Obama now includes.

PLEASE POST A REAL CHART! (Including all those costs)

We as conservatives are now being told that Obama is more honest and that is a reason for the increase in the deficit — please lets show that honesty in the numbers is not an excuse — you will still see that Obama is ballooning spending

We can't correct every inaccurate comment in this thread, but this comment by "DR, DC" is just so laughably wrong it merits a note. The chart does most definitely include social security, Iraq, Afghanistan, and all other federal spending.
It is a Washington Post produced chart. They are sometimes wrong, but not this time. If "DR, DC" wants to pony up some actual OMB or CBO data to back up his outlandish claims, we'll respond again.

[…] from her sarcasm to her Fox-bashing to her badgering a guy who’ll be paying off Obama’s monstrous deficits for decades about why he isn’t satisfied with a $400 tax break this year. The title of the […]

[…] TV Newser, from her sarcasm to her Fox-bashing to her badgering a guy who?ll be paying off Obama?s monstrous deficits for decades about why he isn?t satisfied with a $400 tax break this year. The YouTube – CNN […]

What the graphic does not include is the social security IOUs, but on the other hand, that is just a debt by the government to the government, so it is not really a debt at all. Also, Bush really had no control over that. In fact, he tried to reform social security, but the Dems blocked it. So if you want to blame someone for the IOUs, it's not Bush, but rather the Dems.

I would love to see a chart showing what Bush's or another Republican's projections for 2009+ would have been knowing the current recession we are in. I'm guessing very similar to the one above. Or, show a graph showing the budget as a whole compared to Bush. Not just the resulting deficit. The Budget that Republicans put forth as a response to Obama's was a total joke. But, even THAT one resulted in a huge deficit. The deficit graph comparing administrations is misleading because GDP was not SHRINKING until now.

You do realize that the FY2009 budget was prepared, approved, and signed by the Bush Administration, right? That the TARP package was prepared by and signed on October 3rd 2008 by President Bush, right?

You need to remove FY2000 from 'Bush's deficit' because that surplus was from the Clinton Administration's budget. You also need to move FY2009 to 'Bush's deficit' because that budget and debt has his signature at the bottom.

>>“inherited Bush deficits” (which aren’t Bush’s at all — they are from the Democratic Congress that’s controlled spending for the last two years), he hasn’t said anything about the […]

You mean the Democratic congress elected in November of 2006 to a majority margin of 50.5% to 49.5% in the Senate and 54.3% to 45.7% in the House? The same congress that did not take office until January 4th of 2007, just one month before the Bush Administration issued it's FY2008 Budget? The same congress that was hit with more Republican filibusters in a single year than in the previous 4 years combined?

You honestly expect me to believe that in less than one month, a Democratic congress dictated the entire FY2008 budget to the President, who then nicely obliged and issued it on February 5th, 2007?

FY2001 through FY2008 are entirely under the watch of the Republicans. FY2009 is under the watch of both the Bush Administration and the slightly Democratic Congress.

Supplemental War funding totals-> This does not include interest. Note that it does not include things like long term medical coverage or replacement of equipment, nor does it include the size of the DoD Budget. Also, this is strictly supplemental funding for the Wars, approved after and separate from the Budget.

FY2003: $54.4

FY2004: $92.1

FY2005: $58

FY2006: $100

FY2007: $70

FY2008: $190

FY2009: estimated $83.4

Ok, now lets look at the US Budget Deficit numbers, these are the numbers in the Budget and do not include the supplemental values given above which are separately appropriated by congress.

The Defense BUDGET is exactly that. What do you think that Defending our nation is separate from the rest of the machinations and spending to run our country? Defense spending is based on money that is BUDGETED FOR THAT. You dont just throw money around as your friend has been doing AND btw, that war budget is included in the graphs moneys coming from several funds.

Its all in there and read it and weep – looks like our good orator just talked himself into a single term.

[…] everyday business of the auto companies and the financial system. People are concerned about the massive deficits that are forecasted to result from profligate government spending. So instead of being a conservative movement, […]

Thomas B said, "Both China and Russia have new jet fighter/bomber models that are fully the equal of the F-15."

The F-15 is a fighter that was developed in the late 1960's and first produced in the 1970's. China has not one single aircraft carrier. The U.S. spends more on it's military than every other nation in the world COMBINED, and last year alone spent $300 billion (BILLION, with a "B") just on cost overruns alone. I don't quite understand what you're worried about. Have you seen the F-35? It's light years ahead of an F-15.

"Iran is rapidly coming up to speed with new kinds of missiles, small arms, body armor, and other artillery/guerilla weapons and equipment."

So… they've got the equivalent of our 1950's and 1960's technology? I see no reason to be shaking in my shoes.

Most of which comes from THE UNITED STATES. Thanks to all the "you can't infringe on my 2nd Amendment rights even the tiniest bit" folks out there, we have plenty of morons willing to sell machine guns, assault weapons and yes, hand grenades to anyone willing to pay for them. Guess who that includes? The Mexican drug gangs.

Where are the intelligent conservatives that actually think about this stuff? And I'm not even close to being liberal, by the way (though surely, because I've dared to speak the truth, I'll likely be labelled as one by most here merely because the pejorative is easier to ascribe than to think about the truth).

[…] I’ll be the first to admit that a lot of people were suffering from a serious case of Obama Derangement Syndrome in the post-election weeks leading up to the inauguration, and it didn’t help anything. Some of those people are still focusing on canards like “Obama is a Muslim” while failing to engage the fact that whatever religion he is, he’s authorizing more spending than at any time in American history, and already has set us up for record deficits for the next decade. […]

[…] Originally Posted by independent_thinker2002 Did she feel this way a year ago? I didn’t ask her a year ago. Oh, I know. I’m getting ready for the "Oh, she’s another example of a ‘hyper-partisan’ here because she’s really only complaining when Obama spends!" (I’m guessing those are the talking points discussed over on DU?) Everyone has a point where they say "Enough!" and my point was last fall when BUSH, for whom I voted, was telling us we needed to bail out banks and when McCain, for whom I also voted, was telling us his plan for the "mortgage crisis" was to let someone who signed on for a $400K mortgage negotiate it down to $200K. I objected to Bush’s spending on AIDs aid to Africa (don’t think it will help, mostly), prescription drug coverage, etc. Not enough to demonstrate, however. But these people who make half of what we do but whose homes cost two and a half times what ours does? Yep. Pissed me off enough to get out and do something. And, finally, Obama’s been in office 3 months and has outspent Bush, who was in office for 8 years. Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures The Foundry […]

[…] but now the torch has been handed off to Obama and he is adding super fuel to it we don’t have. Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures The Foundry President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting […]

[…] this year for 95 percent of America without mentioning the inevitable tax hikes to come to pay off Obama’s leviathan deficits. After you watch, head over to CNN to watch Carville pronounce the parties not only […]

Some blame Bush while others blame Obama. Either way, government spending is out of control and sooner or later the American people (Democrates and Republicans) will have to pay the bill. You think its bad now. You haven't seen anything yet.

I like how you fail to mention that Bush added 2.5 trillion to the deficit when it was completely unnecessary. He didn't have to do it. You also fail to mention that Obama is adding the 4.9 trillion because the economy is in a recession.

Obama IS increasing the deficit because he is trying to clean up the mess that Bush made.

Bush DID increase the deficit because he started a fucking war.

So lets see here. Obama spends money to get broken country (that he inherited) out of economic recession.

And Bush spends money to start pointless war where human lives are lost. Bush's spending contributed to DEATH!! Yet a large number of people voted for Bush because he was against abortion. Yet Bush never made abortion illegal, did he? He just used that argument to get votes.

The thing that is wrong with all this is it is trying to seperate Obama and Bush as if they were truely opponents. It's not about left or right.. Its about freedom vs tyranny. This simply divides the country to be conquered by Globalists that simply pose on both sides. Both Bush and Obama are working tword the establishment of world government. By having staged, false opposition, when one puppet is too unpopular to be used anymore they simply swap out to the opposition and use the momentum to continue the same overall agenda.

If obama was truely against bush, we would be seeing a roll back of all the unconstitutional and illegal activities that took place under bush. We would see no immunity for warrentless wiretapping. We would see prosecution for torture. We would see the repeal of the patriot act, the restoring of posse comitatus, ending the real ID act..

But we see none of that. He never was who he posed to be.

We won't be leaving Iraq.

We won't stop delving deeper into a police state.

We won't see the economy get better.

We are looking at two managment teams, bidding for control of slavery incorperated. When we look at debates, we are not looking at the full spectrum of choice, but a narrowly defined range of views that fit into the overall agenda of aligning to subjugate free humanity under total control.

[…] Bush’s spending. The purpose of raising taxes I would assume would be to get rid of the deficit. Please reference the chart on the right. These numbers include all war spending. Now if we look at this chart we can see that even including […]

[…] Bush’s spending. The purpose of raising taxes I would assume would be to get rid of the deficit. Please reference the chart on the right. These numbers include all war spending. Now if we look at this chart we can see that even including […]

[…] not going to pretend that I believe that the Obama administration particularly cares about responsible money management, and they’re certainly not that interested in pushing back on corruption. That leaves belated […]

[…] not going to pretend that I believe that the Obama administration particularly cares about responsible money management, and they’re certainly not that interested in pushing back on corruption. That leaves […]

At the end of WW2 ours was the largest creditor economy, had unprecidented manufacturing capability, and exported oil. We are now the largest debtor nation, make almost nothing, and import most of our oil.

In real terms, WW2 was paid for by 1960. We have no propect of ever re-paying the current debt, nearly all of which is leveed against taxpayers to provide services never intended by the framers of the constitution.

Please stop the bickering about things that make no difference. We already have the deficit and a recession. We should all focus on now and what to do now. I don't like the war as much as anyone. I agree with the war in afghanistan. I don't agree with the one in Iraq. Yes there are a lot of bad people out there. Can we be the world police? The answer is no. Let's clean up our own mess first. Clean up our fiscal policies and minimize government waste. I think anyone liberal, conservative, dem, rep, ind, whatever will agree with that. What security has the wars brought us? Maybe more maybe less it's hard to say. But we seem to have poked the perverbial stick in the bees nest. As Americans we should be united on some simple and honest goals. I am all for debate, but I am also for some intelligent debate. Rather than throwing around some figures, charts and opinions that mean little or nothing. Maybe try solving some problems rather than pointing fingers. I do not support the Democrats or the Republicans, but rather the certain people who make them up. Hopefully with support and feedback from the American people we can all get things back on track. Let's strengthen America for defense instead of offense using intelligence and technology. Build up the manufacturing sector and stop importing so much technology. So many Republicans it seems want to destroy the American manufacturing sector. If you destroy that you destroy America. We will not be able to defend ourselves without our manufacturing infrastructure. That is the only reason we are not part of Germany or Japan right now. My two cents

I usually don't talk politics at work but for some reason the very subject of government spending came up. I am going to print this for my co-worker. I got into a much heated discussion on this really topic and she insisted that it was President Bush. I knew better so I went in search of the truth to enlighten her so thank you for the article.

This is sort of pointless – of course there are massive budget deficits under Obama. We're in a recession – this is how Keynesian economics work. Bush (to his credit) did the exact same thing at the end of his term to help deal with the economic crisis – if anything, Obama's continuing his policy. No economists outside of Cato are seriously suggesting we do anything differently.

Clinton was able to take credit for the 00, 01 years but it was a real, living, breathing CONSERVATIVE congress that enable the responsible spending during those years. It is the only time since Reagan that there has been a conservative power affecting policy in Washington.

[…] Forbes column — we differ on the tea parties and I think, as bad as Bush was, Obama’s spending is even worse. But on this he is indisputably right: the fiscal crisis is now. And by failing to be […]

[…] Those trillions he’s added since then aren’t worth a mention, evidently. Just a reminder about what President Obama’s been up to since that $750 billion spending spree that the Democrat-controlled Congress voted in: The Obama Deficits […]

[…] familiar to… that is a lot closer to the Congressional Budget Office estimate – which you can compare to the original White House estimates for the next 10 years here. The 2010 budget deficit also will be worse than the White House "expected" As the […]

You Republicans could have done something about this if you presented the American people with better candidates. You all voted for McCain which was a vote for Obama so suck it up. You might want to concentrate on getting some quality candidates to run against Obama in the next election rather than sitting around feeling sorry for yourselves and complaining.

Fuzzy math guys. ON January 20th, Obama inherited a 1.3 trillion dollar deficiet. He has added 600 billion to it. Then look what he does over the next 4 years. Looks to me that he is doing exactly what he said he was going to do.

[…] really have to choose since The One will surely force you and I to bail them out, but per that gruesome Heritage graph illustrating his own deficits over the next decade, the national reckoning’s coming. And […]

I've studied the things that cause nations to fail: the warning signs, the events that start snowballing into bigger and bigger problems. Some of them are happening now.

Obama's economic stimulus package is not building up the economy because it requires taxes to do so. Essentially, it requires taking money from individuals and businesses in order to put money into different jobs. This means that in a time where people are already strapped for cash, they'll have even less to pay the bills. Businesses will have to cut back more jobs in order to pay the taxes that are supposed to create more jobs in a very inefficient way.

At the same time, all those tea parties will hurt the economy as well if they take off. The government needs money to operate, so it will have to raise taxes on those who are still paying taxes. If the government doesn't have enough money to operate, it fails. It stops working for us. Let's face it, we need our government to do all the things that we as individuals can't do.

What will bring the economy back is the rise of a new industry. The economy rises and falls with the boom and bust of various industries. In the past it was textiles, then railroads, then steel, then cars, then computers. We need something else to take off that will actually create new jobs in a new market instead of recycling the same limited funds. THAT is what will save our capitalist society, NOT a stimulus package. Until then, we have to hold out hope for good innovators to come along quickly and learn to be frugal and savvy with our finances as our nation's leaders keep trying to shift money around.

Historically, what brought us out of the Great Depression was WWII. The New Deal created some jobs, but it wasn't until Europe demanded our services that the US got back on its feet. New jobs are the answer, not the tax-based ones that the government is creating, but a revival in the private sector.

. . . Of course the Heritage Foundation conveniently leaves out the fact that since fiscal year 2009 began on October 1, 2008, the largest yearly deficit projection (the one for 2009) is partially a result of that 750 billion TARP bailout that took place during the Bush Administration.

One must wonder why the Heritage Foundation feels compelled to be so disingenuous in its reporting.

[…] Obama?s budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016. Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures The Foundry . __________________ Vote for a Regime Change. The First Amendment does not authorize the […]

. . Of course the Heritage Foundation conveniently leaves out the fact that since fiscal year 2009 began on October 1, 2008, the largest yearly deficit projection (the one for 2009) is partially a result of that 750 billion TARP bailout that took place during the Bush Administration.

One must wonder why the Heritage Foundation feels compelled to be so disingenuous in its reporting.

—————————————

I thought the Congress voted for the $750 Billion TARP fund. Wasn't Obama a Senator at the time? Didn't he vote for it? But he has no responsibility for it, right?

Does Congress vote for the budget? Did they vote for the 2009 budget? Wasn't Obama in the Congress at that time? Did he vote for the budget? But again, he has no responsibility for it, right?

Truth in numbers – follow the accumulated debt for each during their presidency; we have Obama for four years regardless, so right before the elections do the calculations for yourself. Right now, Bush spent added an average of $55,000,000,000 per month to the overall debt; Obama is averaging $155,000,000,000 per month to the overall debt.

All numbers include all spending and revenue; Sorry, Obama loses because the democratically controlled Congress does the spending now. I certainly didn't see him veto anything; neither did Bush.

[…] right wing ideologues is quadrupled and they very often cite this chart from an article entitled Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures found on the website belonging to the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation to make their […]

why dont you all move somewhere nice and far away ,like the surface of the sun ?

hurry up and be quick about it!

Darth

Darth,

I will pay for a one way to ticket for you and all your delusional liberal friends to fly to France, Russia, China, etc, your choice, let's see if you like living in countries where all of your income goes for taxes, etc, (I'd also like to see if you can open your yap and voice your opinion over there like you do now) you'll fit right in!!!

YOU (and the rest of your clueless party) are the biggest reason we are in this mess!!!! Stop spending all of our money on your socialist agendas and maybe we might actually be able to survive!!!

I'm a 40 year old, white, male, former Republican who voted for President Obama and don't regret it one bit.

I'll take a SELF-MADE man over a SILVER-SPOON dork like W any day of the week. I'm now a registered Independent and have deduced there are now 2 kinds of Republicans:

1) Millionaires; 2) DUPES

I am fiscally conservative and socially liberal. Half of the so-called "Republicans" on this website can't even spell. I decided to drop the GOP forever after:

1) LewinskyGate (a fake scandal if ever there was one); &

2) BushCo (TM) – those chicken-hawks will go down in history as the single worst administration in the history of this country.

You might want to wake up, smell the coffee and get your info somewhere else besides Rush, Hannity, Beck & Savage. The reason why? Those "entertainers" are EACH paid over $100M in contracts to "carry water" (lie to you DUPES) for the GOP.

i am wodood i like all of the u s presedents and i am so poor and tow years ago talliban killed my father and my father was with the us forse and now i want to come there how i can do the us forse did not help with me

Here is all you need to find out what Bush spent during his presidency. Just put in the years he was president to find out the real truth in his spending. You thought Clinton and Reagan were spenders? Nothing compared to Bush Sr.

[…] stimulus waste, the travesty of cap-and-trade, and (soon) the unholy bloat of ObamaCare. Toss in Heritage’s now-famous graph of Obama’s deficits and Innocent Bystanders’ chart of how dismally the stimulus has […]

[…] they’re going get wealthy like the system as it is. More sobering assessment on the budget: Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures The Foundry The Wall Street Journal is a long respected reporting source. The fact that you dislike them in no […]

I chose to read this article because I wanted to see comparisons of Bush vs. Obama, and ended up feeling the same sick feeling that the last elections brought to my life.

First, I am an independent. I typically vote for the smarter guy, or if I don't like either (Kerry vs. Bush) I voted for neither.

I have two points to make.

First, concerning the "Clinton Surplus", I may be wrong, but the numbers they are talking about are not against the actual deficit, they are against the projected growth of the deficit. So (not using actual numbers, way to lazy to go get those) the projected growth of the deficit for Clinton was say 5%, but when he left office, it had only grown 2%. If you extract his years by themselves, he did create a surplus, however if you add in the existing deficit, then technically no, there never was a surplus. One thing for sure, no one can argue he did not spend less and do more than any Republican for 30 years.

Second, at what point do we learn how to compromise. Is our country so clearly divided? That we actually hate and ridicule anyone who doesn't think the way we do? Does your community no longer matter?

To me, a patriot questions government not because of who is in charge, but rather the content of the changes being made, and the actions of people instituting them. No one should argue G.W. did a bad job, its clear he did. However, throw in Congress for the blame. Seems to me, like we need to come together to solve this crisis, meet in the middle. If we cant do that, then we are destined to fail. No matter how much or little we spend on anything.

[…] about half of the unemployed people in America. How about lowering the deficit, uh he has already quadrupled it. When President Bush left office the deficit was 400 billion or so, so far big O’s deficit is […]

The 236.2 surplus for 2000 is a Clinton surplus. The surplus for 2001 is a result of the more draconian aspects of Bush's economic plan not having been yet adopted. Bush entered the White House with a mild recession possible on the horizon and with the federal budget in surplus. He proceeded to squander this away in the next eight years leaving the economic disaster that Obama inherited. Obama's deficits are the result of the disastrous Bush presidency, but don't worry the dishonest argument that informs the Foundry's analysis will probably win out and in four years we will have the Republicans back in office to resume their leadership in marching the country into the ranks of underdeveloped world.

To the people harping on DOD spending… POUND SAND. About the only jobs you don't benifit from DOD spending are teaching, retail, and tourism. If you work in any manufacturing or tech sector, you have probably benefited directly or indirectly from Defense spending. DARPA is directly responsible for a huge percentage of the innovation that goes on in our country. I work for a MEMS design house and we deal with dozens of companies that use defense department rewards to come up with new innovative products. Things like night vision sensors that can be used by fire departments to find people and locate hot spots in smoke filled buildings. Or sensors that can record the stresses on bridges and other structures, reducing the risk of another bridge collapse. These innovations were paid for by DOD spending, so before you go spewing your non-sense about how much we spend on defense, you should look into how many families that money is supporting, both directly and indirectly.

[…] SOURCE President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for an additional $2.6 trillion in public debt), President Obama?s budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016. […]

[…] columns blaming Bush?s tax cuts for driving up the deficit. Of course now deficits that are many times the size of Bush?s deficits will be the savior of us all. And we have always been at war with Oceania. The message was Deficit […]

This is why I HATE politics! NO WONDER nothing gets done. the Rep's attack the Dem's and the Dem's attack the Rep's! If you simplify all the issues, we all probably do want the same outcomes! It's clear to me that we are going the wrong way with the budget! Sure it stemmed from Bush, but Obama is not helping! Stop blaming who "started it" and start thinking of ways to make this country better! Media, people, websites, etc are ALL biased these days and for someone like me who hates listening/reading about what the rep's think about that and what the dem's believe about that – AHHH stop already! Can someone out there just print facts without distorting it to make your point seem right??? It would be a lot more cut and dry if media wasn't behind a certain party! Don't tell me they aren't because they are! So many people like me give up on politics because it is SO hard to get to the facts – all you have left is to listen to someone's opinion and everyone is usually biased anyway! It's really too bad, but politics have turned me off to learning more about current issues, etc. I just ABSOLUTELY HATE the childlike bickering between the parties – get over yourselves and put the country first so our children/grandchildren etc can be proud to talk about our county and its history!

[…] plans to punt on at least two of his key priorities in favor of the deficit reduction Obama only claims to champion. That a Democratic Congress is more hawkish on the deficit shows not only how […]

Well you know I'm sick of people blaming bush for the bailouts and the deficit, because first off obama was perfectly aware of what he was walking into and he voted for the bailouts. Also the stimulus was 100% his fault and that was more than the bailout.

"Bush started out with money. Obama started in the hole." What? So you're saying that the economy tanked because of President Obama? So it wasn't Bush's policies that reversed Clinton's 2 billion dollar surplus into a 10 trillion dollar deficit? Jindal (R) of Lousiana had no problem handing out President Obama's stimulus checks, masquerading them as his own.

[…] for and I will not be able to argue. But otherwise… Why dont you get some real facts. Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures The Foundry Our debt did start with the housing bubble…(Once again it wasnt the war you need to realise that […]

It is interesting that 05,06,07 were showing a rapid trend towards zero deficit even with the start of the surge in Iraq in early 07.

Had it not been for the sub-prime collapse and the resulting 700 Billion TARP (of which roughly half was distributed in 08), I would think that 08 would have shown a much better numbers. For exmaple: 08 shows around a 415B Deficit, of which 350B were the TARP.

Also note that the TARP is supposed to be paid back by the banks once they become profitable again. I read on the WSJ that 68B have already been paid back.

Question: Does the 08 Deficit also include the 85B bailout/takeover of AIG? And could this asset be sold later on to recover this money?

A variety of flaws mar the numbers in this article. I’ll point out the most obvious.

This claim is demonstrably false: “President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008.”

The US government’s accounting years run from October 1 through September 30. President Bush is responsible for spending after October 1, 2001. According to treasurydirect.gov, the national debt on October 1, 2001 was 5,806,151,389,190.21. The national debt on September 30, 2008 was 10,024,724,896,912.49.

This is an increase of 4.2 trillion dollars, not 2.5 trillion dollars, not even including the spending that happens in fiscal year 2009.

The links you posted show the National Debt which has continually increased over the years. This chart is talking about the National Deficit, which is the annual budget. The years you reject simply say the government was earning more than it was spending; it doesn't say that during those years we reduced the National Debt. You need to think of it in terms of your personal budget. If you're spending more money each month than your income can sustain, you have a personal budget deficit.

It is funny to watch conservatives all of a sudden worried about deficits. Where was all this outrage in 2000-2004 when Bush was taking funds out of our Social Security Trust fund to try to make his debt look lower. Also, whoever keeps saying there was no budget surplus in 2000 please stop – you are obviously not looking at the difference between the gross debt and the public debt. Noone uses gross debt figures when discussing our national deficit because it is just plain stupid – intragovernmental debt, etc. The debt we have to really worry about is what we owe foreign countries, etc – the public debt.

So, Bush DID take an over $200 billion surplus and make it into a $477 billion deficit in 4 years. These are just facts. He also tried to be tricky by moving funds over from the Social Security fund – many times…

He increased spending on not just defense and homeland security and also education and transportation. He introduced layers of big government in areas they never existed before – see FEMA's structure before and after – and under that new structure we encountered one of, if not the worst natural disaster in US history.

So – we in our lifetime actually experienced something that is not supposed to exist and cannot possibly work – big government conservatism. Cutting taxes and increasing spending – how does that work without creating huge deficits? And it did – and everyone can see the figures now…and our economy tanked..so what is the argument?

Also – someone made the usual, extremely tired trickle down argument of "when a rich guy buys a yacht who builds it and maintains it?"

True enough but when you give more money to lower or middle class people what do they do? They spend it. Where do they spend it? Walmart, Kroger, etc, etc. What's the difference? Lower class people actually spend almost every dime of it and spend it within our domestic economy.

Rich people spend lots of money and also horde lots of money – giving more money to bankers. And no offense to anyone in that industry here but I have lots of friends who work in the banking industry who tell me this all the time…bankers are not that smart. They know how to do one thing – move numbers around but big picture thinking is not really their bag. And if you do not regulate them – say for instance give them the ability to buy and sell peoples mortgages and debt with no regulation (30:1 ratios, etc – the whole derivative market) you are playing with fire. And when you play with fire..

Also don't forget rich people also horde money in ways that doesn't benefit the US economy at all (not even US bankers) in offshore accounts – recent estimates put that figure close to $800 billion.

Trickle down economics doesn't work – it creates a boom or bust cycle in our economy. The boom is great but it is short lived and somewhat artifical- the bust well is where we are today. Remember we even had two years of serious recession in the late 80s so even the so-called Reagan prosperity still created a bust…

Big government conservatism is not supposed to exist – it is not something that can be understood. My whole point in this response is that all of this supposed outrage from the right about deficits could have done us a lot of good between 2000-2004. Instead all we got was cheerleading…and now we get all this criticism about deficit spending?

Laugh, if you are dumb enough to blame everything on one person (President) then look at what happened when Clinton left and Bush came in. The last eight years were a disaster and it is currently taking a lot of money to get out of that disaster. As mentioned the chart does NOT accurately show the deficit decline during Bush's terms so please don't believe every picture/word you see on the internet.

I just read through these. My favorite: Ross, from TN, 3/09. Anyone agree with me that the anti-Obama camp presents the persuasive arguments? Has Obama lost the intellectual high ground he thought he'd claimed during the campaign? Is this administration playing defense? Maybe it's just time we're seeing this president for what he is: an empty suit. PS I'm an anti-Bush democrat who voted for McCaine, how rare is that?

Again I ask – please, PLEASE tell me where all this "concern" over the deficit was in the years 2000-2004 where spending was largely increasing while receipts, due to all the tax cuts, were drastically decreased. At least in the current scenario there is some talk of increasing receipts by raising certain tax brackets. Also, there is talk of finally cracking down on tax evasion, etc which would also increase revenue. That, even if we don't agree with it, seems to at least make some level of sense.

It is as if in 2000-2004 noone gave a damn about making any sense whatsoever. We were going to increase spending, start wars and decrease everyone's taxes? To pay for the war we were told to just go shopping? We would even steal from the social security trust fund to pay for tax cuts????

We really could have used some more of you deficit hounds back then – many of us were jumping up and down trying to get someone to listen but all we got was cheerleading and talk about how you were going to spend your stupid $600 tax rebate check on a new DVD player or something.

I wonder how many people now would gladly refund that $600 check to have about 30% of their 401K balance back?

[…] Nothing, eh? Remember the Medicare prescription drug benefit, the largest entitlement expansion since the Great Society? True, it may be better forgotten, as the “benefit” is set to cost taxpayers $800 billion by 2016. […]

I'm sorry but you can't exactly blame Obama for the stimulus package. The whole reason that was necessary was to try to fix many of the financial problems that past presidents had contributed to, including Bush. Even if you argue that the stimulus bill was too much money, we were slumping into a depression and some action was required. Much of the money in that bill has been needed for some time, but previous presidents instead contributed to the deficit with national defense and avoided fixing financial problems.

[…] dismantling our government, our economy and our civil society. The “emergency” bailouts have added hundreds of billions to the federal deficit without benefiting anyone outside of a few select interest groups who helped put them in office. […]

So the price of trying to be more transparent and open with the American people about how this money is spent is to be labeled a Socialist? I am glad to finally see all the real numbers, aren't you?

So ask yourself this question: what possible political gain do you get from reporting the numbers truthfully and thus showing a huge deficit? I can't think of one – can you? We of course know the political gain you get from hiding the numbers – you get to spend money however you want with no accountability (see the last 8 years). I personally do not favor that kind of accounting – or "leadership".

So with no political gain that leaves it as being done because it is the right thing to do…and then have to live with all of the new born "deficit police" on the right…

Judging from all the comments, these numbers can't be considered reliable.

For example, the Medicare unfunded liability?

The April 2008 Medicare Trustees Report states:

The 2008 Social Security and Medicare Trustees Reports show the combined unfunded liability of these two programs has reached $101.7 trillion in today's dollars! That is more than seven times the size of the U.S. economy and 10 times the size of the outstanding national debt. The unfunded liability is the difference between the benefits that have been promised to retirees and what will be collected in dedicated taxes and Medicare premiums. Last year alone, the size of the debt rose by $11.5 trillion. If no other reform is enacted, this funding gap can only be closed in future years by substantial tax increases, large benefit cuts or both.

President Bush left with a $700 billion deficit. I wonder if that was part of the TARF money of $700 billion, 50% of which was left for Pres. Obama. What happened to that? After 7 months in office, Pres. Obama had added $1 trillion to the deficit. The stimulus was not working, unemployment is rapidly rising, and the clunker project did not work. I think this was not the proper way of running our economic crisis. There are explosions of waste, government expansions, and expenditures not properly directed for economic growth.

Sure, war spending is included in the Bush numbers, but are they not included in the projected numbers? Doubtful.

A. It’s been 10 months. Give the man a chance.

B. You can’t ever go by “projected” figures. It’s like trying to look into a crystal ball.

C. Obama won’t be president in 2019. A LOT CAN CHANGE FOLKS.

Answer to "A": Sir, spoken like a true Democrat. In the first 60 days Washingtons Joke was in office he spent $2.6 trillion of your dollars. Thus making our bill with the friendly PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA larger than what it was with the Bush Administration. ONLY 10 months? Sir you are like 2 months ahead of yourself thus telling me you haven't a clue what you're talking about.

Answer to "B": Sir, I suggest you write your Congressman and Senator as well as your legislators in California, a STATE THAT HAS SURVIVED ON "PROJECTED" figures longer than you and I combined have been alive. The Fed's have survived on "PROJECTED" figures since 1700. Don't believe me read your history books.

Answer to "C": Sir the next election after 2012 is 2016 NOT 2019. Experts are "projecting" that if Washington's Joke of a president does NOT change HIS strategy soon we are going to be in for one heck of a rude awakening. Not that anyone gives a tinkers darn. The man, and again I use the word loosely, scares the living heck right out of me.

I have a feeling this man is only going to need 4 years to ruin this country more than what it is.

I'd also LOVE it if conservatives actually took any responsibility for the current mess that's forcing the need for record deficits. It's as if Obama came into office without 2 wars, without an economic meltdown well underway, without the need to fix health care system because costs per person are projected to increase by another 100% in the next 6 years… likely to hit nearly 20% of GDP. The countries you guys like to make fun of have better health care results (BY FAR) and spend have as much once their systems are in place.

Discredited, historically disastrous free-market-will-fix-everything lies continue to flourish to the benefit of whom? READ YOUR HISTORY!! Doing nothing fixes nothing. Doing nothing didn't do so well at the end of the Hoover administration when the feds did basically nothing waiting for free market to fix everything for almost 2 years – our economy collapsed and we ended up in the Great Depression. The end of the 19th century (Gilded Age) wasn't much better with free market boom and busts at such a pace that the periods accomplishments were to create such a disparity in wealth that these rich and powerful ruled the nation despite whomever was elected. PLEASE, right wingers, go back and read up on the Gilded Age and convince me that period should be the goal of our nation because we're in a Gilded Age now and all you seem willing to do is nothing.

We should have voted for McCain… in 2000! Then maybe we wouldn't have had 8 years of "spending like a drunken sailor"; maybe wouldn't be burning money in Iraq and maybe wouldn't have grossly deregulated the banking industry? Unfortunately McCain's nomination was torpedoed by Bush lies just like the economy has been.

Look at a chart of national debt or deficits over time… why do our modern "conservatives" always make them MUCH bigger… they certainly aren't fiscally conservative. The debt trajectory we are currently on was started during Bush II (http://zfacts.com/p/318.html). The current blame game is deceitful at best. At least Obama is trying to FIX things instead of succeeding in BREAKING everything. Lets pray he does succeed instead of trying to insure he fails.

Wasn't it Reagan who said "deficits don't matter"??? Today's "conservatives" are either HYPOCRITES or FOOLS. I want to consider myself conservative but labels are more meaningless than ever.

Anyone trying to DEFEND OBAMA's INSANE SPENDING is a person either in severe DENIAL of what many warned would happen if OBAMA WAS ELECTED or one of the many people who bought homes knowing they could NOT afford them if the interest rose on thier ADJUSTABLE MORTGAGE and then CLAIMED THEY HAD NO IDEA?????

PLEAZZZZZZZZZZZE . OBAMA, REID, PELOSI – YOU PEOPLE VOTED THEM IN AND NOW YOU WILL LIVE WITH THIER MESS LIKE THE REST OF US until 2010 and 2012 when they get their butts kicked out of office

[…] He has been working, he has doubled our deficit! This is the change people voted for, right?? Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures ? The Foundry Really – a heavy does of in that first statement. __________________ […]

Regardless of where you got the figures from, I checked the cbo budget figures and you're comparing apples and oranges: FY 2008 is 459 for the TOTAL DEFICIT and FY 2009 is 1587 for the TOTAL DEFICIT – 1720 is from the FY 2009 ON BUDGET DEFICIT and ignores the FY 2009 OFF BUDGET surplus. One might almost think you did this on purpose. I won't bother commenting on the rest of the article.http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/105xx/doc10521/budgetp…

Secondly, while you do say "that Obama has already HELPED quadruple", gee, you could be more clear that the majority of the 1587 is from Bush, n'est-ce pas? Oh yes, you do say something vague about that in your update at the end of the article, after everyone has already been twisted.

Third, the stimulus package was necessary for such a deep recession – I know you disagree. In fact, in addition to the talked up tax cuts, RR and W both employed dramatic increases in spending to get us out of their recessions, minor by comparison, but they just didn't know when to stop the stimulus from spending or tax cuts.

Clarification on my previous post: When I say "their recessions" referring to RR and W, I mean the early 80s and early 2000s recessions which they got left with, but I am not blaming them for these recessions.

Where was the tea party eight years ago? Too late! Now it just looks like a bunch of republicans disguised as libertarians . If you really cared about government spending your tea party should have started a long time ago.

I guess for me it is even worse because I believe that 911 was a false flag operation so that we could go into Iraq for the oil and construction contracts such as Halliburton (Cheney). In other words so that the rich can get richer while our children and citizens die and we pay for it.

The war on terror is a made up "enemy".

We need to demand that Obummer keep is promise and pull out of Iraq and Afganistan, if we are to have any hope to recover,

Phrase found several times here: "Bush started…Obama doubled/increased/accelerated" Maybe recognition that these trends in many cases started with Bush will help stop the chorus of, "Obama is destroying the fabric of our country, our way of life, etc." Both are guilty of overspending–is spending money we don't have OK (Bush), but spending more money we don't have un-American and socialistic?

If some of you think this is some partisan Heritage propoganda: Please feel free to watch the movie I.O.U.S.A It was made by Americas Accountant General. The man that actually did the books and has the exact figures. It shows what all of this means and includes his future estimate of Obama's spending eventually collapsing the government under the weight of its own debt. WAKE UP!

[…] CBO have both said that the debt would rise to an estimated $9 trillion in the next 10 years. This translates to a lot of red ink for a lot of years. As for that junior Senator in 2006; what advice did he […]

Not one of you conservatives were brave enough to speak out against Bush while he was in office. You were cowards. You were cowards from your couches. You have now found your nerve and you unleash it on the one person that threw himself into the gap to stop it from expanding. He said he would. He said it would not be easy. He said he may not always get it right. He was honest.

You are some very fickle and disloyal people and you've deserted him now when he needs us the most to back him and back his play against the senate and congress and our own parties.

[…] “President Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. The Washington Post has a great graphic which helps put President Obama’s budget deficits in context of President Bush’s.” (full story) […]

When President Obama took office on January 20, 2009, the federal debt stood at $10.626 trillion. As of September 10, 2009, the debt was at $11,784, about $1.15 trillion or about 10% higher than when he took office. Sean Hannity and others continue to say that President Obama has “doubled the deficit in one year, quadrupled the debt”. What they are alluding to, but not making this clear, is the increase in the annual federal deficit, which can be compiled by finding the start and finish numbers between October 1 and September 30 (which is the federal fiscal year). The last year of George W. Bush finds the annual deficit to be about $1.17 trillion. That year ended on September 30, 2008. By January 20, 2009, when Barack Obama took office, the total U.S. federal debt has risen another $500 billion, from about $10.124 to about $10,625 trillion; thus, President Obama entered fiscal year 2008/2009, mid-way, already $500 billion into the annual federal deficit.

Statements that President Obama has “doubled the (annual) deficit” are lies. They are simply not true. And any statements that imply that Obama has significantly increased the total federal debt are also untrue. In fact, the biggest contributors to the total federal debt would be President Ronald Reagan, who doubled the debt during his eight years in office, from about $1.6 trillion to over $3.0 trillion, and George W. Bush, who nearly doubled the debt, raising it from about $5.5 trillion to $10.625 trillion over his eight years.

The sad truth is this. Obama won everyone over with his smooth words, but he doesnt know what he is doing. he is a good intentioned man, who has a lot of socialist ideas. He is proving by his actions (i.e. 4 times the national deficit, working to pass a health initiative that forces people to get healthcare, dumping even more troops into battle than bush did despite promising to pull out, etc) that he will say whatever people want to hear, but then do what he wants. He wants to FORCE people to pay for healthcare. That is rediculous. You look closely at what he has done since he got into office and what he had promised when he was running, and it is resemblent of hitler, who saw a struggling country, promised to get them out of their recession, and then when he got power, showed that he would keep all those promises he made but not in the way he had made it seem(i.e. he promised a universal healthcare system that turned into a completly different proposal once he got into office that will destroy the market in healthcare and create a ton of lost jobs if it passes but would give the gov't more power. You also look in history as to how we came out of WW2 as a world power, and the fact is China is in that same position now. If things dont change soon, we will find ourselves in a dangerous position. People need to get involved and start making educated political desicions instead of just listening to the sly tongue of a socialist.

The war in Iraq is the cost of our energy hunger, we invaded that country to secure our energy needs for generations to come. Because us americans freak out if gas goes up by a couple of dollars. I wonder what arab country they will invade next ?

A very wise old man once said; "Never underestimate the power of idiots in large numbers." I never understood the power of that statement untill America voted president Obama in office. A man so committed to turning around this country around from its path leading into a sure depression would logically triple the national debt in just two months. Also it would be logically ingenious to raise taxes on working class Americans to promote a stronger spending habits and thrift among voters. In order to promote bigger spending to grow the economy Obama decides to take borrowed money any hand it to the people who shafted voters to begin with. At least Bush had enough common sense to hand money to voters in the form of stimulus funds (which were taxable and did circulate money through our government and local economies) and economic spending increased by 15 percent as a direct result of the relief from government oppression. God knew what was coming when the bible gives the prophecy of the "rich" oppresing the poor. "Vote for CHANGE!!!"…..because that's all we will have by the time Obama gets done. I think America should have kept our Money, Votes, and Common sense and let Obama keep the "change."

First the democrats criticized bush for spending, now the republicans are criticizing obama. All of you are biased.

Second, Fact: FDR spent his way of the depression by spending on government programs for factories and bridges, the hoover dam and construction. That's what Obama is trying to do.

Third: Fact: Bush spent money but in the wrong way, on an illegal war.

Fourth: NCLB goes against the constitution, because it withholds money from THE STATE so that the federal government can have their way for education but under the constitution it is clear that it is the state's power to run their public schools

Conclusion, don't be a hypocrite, don't criticize obama for spending when Bush did the same. If you want to criticize Obama, then do it on his promises.

[…] few weeks ago I wrote that the Obama administration’s policy of continuing (and dramatically increasing) reckless federal spending would result in a national sales tax, better known by its laughable […]

[…] jacking up any chance of an economic recovery here in America any time soon and blowing record amounts of money we don’t have in a record amount of time putting our kid’s great grandchildren in hock up to their eyebrows […]

[…] up the mess. It’s a big mess. We will see when his term is up.[/quote] Why wait, take a look: http://www.foundry.org/2009/03/24/…t-in-pictures/ __________________ In God We Trust America Runs On Kool-Aid Support Our Troops! "One of […]

This article lies by omission. President Bush's budget didn't include war spending; Obama's does. That accounts for the massive increase in the deficit. The other part, stimulus, has saved this economy from disaster. So the choices were 1) stimulus, or 2) near-depression. We made the right choice. We will get the deficit under control in time. In pursuit of a partisan message, try being honest, "heritage" foundation.

[…] Third, speaking of hypocritical, whining about the deficit now, after what BUsh did to the country is a frickin joke. Republicans performed dishonest accounting passing all spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as "supplemental emergency spending". Then they passed the largest entitlement program in 50 years without providing a penny of funding for it. And if you look at an analysis of where the deficit comes from, it is primarily due to the policies enacted by Bush and a drop of revenue because of the recession (caused by the Bush admin). Obama’s spending is minor still compared to Bush’s. Not true. http://www.foundry.org/2009/03/24/…t-in-pictures/ […]

[…] line…. hmmm … he was a darn piker. There is no question that President George W. Bush did increase the federal deficit to a historic $700 billion through 2008. However, Obama is adding another $1 […]

Here's one for you math geniuses. Remove all deficit spending (see below for some examples) created during the Bush years taking us back to Clintons last budget. Then start anew as if Bush never existed. Remove from Obama spending anything associated to Bush created unfunded deficits, such as medicare, two wars, no child left behind, and two tax cuts and make up a pretty little graph. I bet it would look dramatically different.

It is poor research indeed to throw out a bunch of numbers then, cite a blog as your source. A blog that doesn't bother to cite it's own sources. Seems to be the norm on this site. Might as well repeat what some drunken blowhard spouts at your local watering hole at closing time.

And to George, Lititz, PA and everyone else decrying the falsehood of a Clinton administration surplus: there's a difference between the federal debt and a budget deficit/surplus. Nobody will argue that there was a federal debt under Clinton. It's true, there has always been a federal debt… but there was a budget surplus… a damn big one. Now that surplus that Bush inherited could have went to pay down the federal debt. But we all know that he didn't… he sunk it into a pointless war in Iraq.

[…] support and good will of younger voters. But if they value the support of the millennial voters, why are they saddling them with higher taxes and debt? Why are they forcing them to foot the bill for giveaways to some of America’s wealthiest […]

[…] support and good will of younger voters. But if they value the support of the millennial voters, why are they saddling them with higher taxes and debt? Why are they forcing them to foot the bill for giveaways to some of America’s wealthiest […]

WV – Well, I guess I'm not a genuis like you are. You mention two wars, one of which the current President once called the "War of Necessity." Ever since Obama was elected, he has been backpedalling on that Campaign theme, likely because of pressure from Left-Wing geniuses like yourself, who blame everything wrong in the world, on George Bush. And WV, as you try to rewrite history, can you go ahead and delete that we were attacked on 9/11. Oh, I bet you "the genius" believe Bush and Cheney were behind the 9/11 attacks.

To NYC yes WWII got us out of the Depression by spending but they spent money on things that we need and gave millions of people jobs that had purpose instead of paying one group of people to dig a ditch and another group to fill it in. We need to stop throwing money on things that dont stimulate the economy

[…] Originally Posted by Iriemon It depends on what you mean by "piled on more debt". $1.4 trillion in debt was piled on during Bush’s last year in the WH. Obama still hasn’t reached that level (but probably will pretty soon). You might want to take at look at this link. http://www.foundry.org/2009/03/24/…t-in-pictures/ […]

Nine months ago, the George Bush Financial Crisis, as historians are now aptly calling this debacle, loomed heavy and dreadful over all of us. It is an epic achievement that President Obama, in a mere nine months, has tamed this rampaging collapse, and done so with great statesmanship, with a cool hand, and well thought out polices. The return of Positive GDP growth in Q3 2009 is a watershed event, and President Obama deserves the highest accolades for his tenacity and unwavering leadership through this darkest crisis. Of course, this is one step of the many steps which are needed to get back to real prosperity. There is no doubt that we will soon be blessed with the same success in jobs creation, health care reform, etc. God Bless President Obama.

A year ago it was blame bush, look what bush did, But this man coming into office is the messiah(remember)?, So where is Michael Moore now?

Hmm Bush golfed 24 times in his entire term (Michael Moore)Obama has golfed 24 times this year (wheres Michael)? Bush created a 1.85 trillion dollar deficit in 8 years(Michael Moore) Obama has spent 1.75 in his first year in office.

Come on now!!

For everyone that thought that he was going to great, well guess what he is. (for himself)

Remember the old saying….the laws are for the law abiding citizens. Well the cash for clunkers is for the tax paying citizens.

Why not help people down in Louisiana with the extra money that you had from the presidential campaign? Ohh thats right Mr. Obama has only gone there for 4 hours. But Bush was hated on for years because of there not being money ready ohh but wait Mayor Nagen blamed bush for Nagens spending spree on himself.

As far as the health reform, I happen to like the fact that if I get bit by a rattlesnake in the middle of florida, that a chopper will get me the antivenom from across the country in a matter of hours as apposed to having a heart attack and waiting in line for 48 hours to be seen by the doctor.

So dont blame the Health care companies. When the electric scooter that is on tv will cost you nothing and charge medicare insurance 7000.00 for a machine that cost 1000.00 Hmm go figure.

@Scott, Charlotte-Being the genius you say I am, I'm willing to forego any expense for the Afghan war, if you're willing to concede the others, such as tax cuts, Iraq, and no child left behind as deficits that the current admin must deal with. And then we have inflation to consider also. If you do not concede, you're rewriting history.

[…] not true. Obama is adding to the deficit and going to double the amount of Bush’s deficits. Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures The Foundry __________________ "Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young […]

I suspect the economy will start moving again in late 1Q10 and unemployment will begin dropping significantly shortly therafter. Why? Because the stimulus is being spent exactly the way Frank, Pelosi, Obama planned it. They wanted to keep people suffering as long as possible, before pulling a rabut out of the hat and having them "clearly" responsible for "saving" the economy.

Manipulating, deceitful, hateful, party hacks. And the sad thing is the idiots who voted for them and are out of work will worship the ground they walk on next year. Watch it happen….

I disliked the republicans. At least their desire for keeping the US business friendly was a step in the right direction.

I loathe the democrats. Their desire to subjugate everything to their will, will ruin the US for a generation, if not permanently.

I've read the first 100 comments and I think some perspective is needed. Are Americans REALLY ready for the spending to stop? I'm guessing not. You all say you want it, but are you really ready for massive bank failures, who knows how much unemployment, loss of your retirement savings, a large increase in violence, etc?

Let's face it, it doesn't matter who became President. The same outcome would have occurred, so spare us with the political rhetoric. Your two parties are "tax and spend" and "borrow and spend."

And the spending HAS worked. That is, if artificially propping up the system is your definition of the word. Personally, I wish they'd cut off all the bailout spending immediately and let us take our medicine quickly so we can rebuild this country. I'm prepared….I think.

[…] conceive of him lowering taxes or cutting spending, but it would be nice to see him back away from spending that dwarfs the Bush years. I know that last wish is actually realistic, far more realistic than you would expect given the […]

[…] (Hat tip to Blue Crab Boulevard.) I certainly remember Democrats and the mainstream media (the same thing, really) ranting about the millions of jobs lost under Bush, not to mention the climbing deficits. Funny how quiet they are now. I’m not sure we will see unemployment under Obama get back down to the highest point it reached under Bush (a little over 6%), nor will we ever see the deficit get back down to the highest point it reached under Bush. To wit (via the Heritage Foundation): […]

Everyone on this board is whining and crying like babies. You went crazy with your credit cards bought flat screens,cars and then went crazy with mortgages. Then the banks took more risks. Now everyone comes down from the high life and now has to deal with economic reality like the rest of the world. And they want to blame the government for keeping it artificially afloat. If the government didn't bail out these companies then the US would be in a depression.And if Obama wasn't spending like crazy then employment would be at 20% and the country would be failing even more. US spent like crazy for years above livability and now the chicken is coming home to roost. You didn't want to spend too much on taxes.Okay,then the government piled up debt. You didn't want to pay too much on oil. The government spent more on that. And the list goes on.

The jobs aren't there because they were outsourced. US doesn't have the productive industries to pull them out. Instead a bunch of non-productive industries like investment banks. We won't end the wars because we want to but because there won't be anymore money to fund these wars in a few years. So its time to suck it up and deal with the problems instead of prolonging them.

[…] in no small part to the debt and what the current President plans to do to “fix” it, here’s the projected deficits of the Obama administration compared with the Bush administratio…. Disgust at the current administration’s priorities is not […]

[…] our children that this was our time.” Indeed, his time to saddle them and their children with unprecedented debt, not only from his “stimulus” folly, but next up, ObamaCare, and then his job-killing […]

[…] our children that this was our time." Indeed, his time to saddle them and their children with unprecedented debt, not only from his "stimulus" folly, but next up, ObamaCare, and then his job-killing […]

With every tax cut, rebate, waiver, endless corporate giveaway – the President was well aware of the future exploding Medi-care, he was well aware of our rapid decline in competitiveness, crumbing infrastructure, well aware of falling revenues

When the GOP says “We spent like Democrats” – that’s what they want

you to believe. Truth is they managed to gut the federal gov’t -our federal dollars and they have close to nothing to show for it – except the depletion of American standards as far the eye can see.

the $3.1 trillion budget submitted to Congress by President Bush is a race to the bottom & speaks for itself:

– cuts funding for teaching hospitals.

– freezes medical research.

– the Pentagon would get a $35 billion increase to $515 billion for core programs, with war costs additional

– $70 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ( 2008 was almost $200 billion).

– Bush's budget contains no war costs beyond 2009

– 25% cut of the Department of Transportation.

– 3% to Health and Human Services.

– almost $200 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid over the next 5 yrs.

– cuts a $302 million program that gives grants to children's hospitals to subsidize medical education.

– eliminated a $300 million program for public health improvement projects would be eliminated.

– grants to improve health care in rural areas would be cut by 87%.

– Center for Disease Control's budget – a 7% cut,

– a budget freeze for The National Institutes of Health, which funds health research grants.

I think that what is most disturbing is that in this article you fail to mention the fact that the projected deficit for the year which was established before Obama took office was 1.4 trillion. You also get the numbers wrong the current deficit is around about 1.6 trillion. That means that it is about 200 billion more than initially projected. That 200 billion accounts for President Obama's stimulus package. So to be honest, Obama has NOT quadrupled the deficit; he's barely even gone off the projected venue. You don't have to believe me, these are Conservative columnist Bruce bartlett's assessments.

President Obama and his administration have without question created the biggest spending frenzy ever….ok..but that is done…now what? How about we stop spending and start cutting? But where do we cut? How about a program that has not cured cancer, not helped a starving citizen, not gave health care to the needy….NASA.. this is the biggest waste of money. Billions every year has been spen on this and nothing but velcro and tang have come from it. Another little tid bit.. all there work is duplicated…yes we do the same projects and spending in our Air Force..

Now as far as a President goes…Obama speaks well..however, he has spent more time going to other countries than working on the one he was elected to. He promised like so many Electees.. that he would bring our troops home immediately…he has not..he also is sending another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan…hellooooo doesn't anyone notice we not only are in a war that nobody wants….but now we are fighting two wars….what happened to .."I was always against the war"….apparently that meant he is against war unless he declares it…..

"President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for an additional $2.6 trillion in public debt), President Obama’s budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016."

These may indeed be accurate. Do they however take "the rule of 72" into account whereby the dollar needs to be doubled over any seven year period to maintain true purchasing power? If not (as I imagine they do not), then you are looking at the same dollar amount seven years down the line as you just experienced the previous 7 years. In other words, no change in spending.

It seems weird to me that people don’t research the fact. No, they blindly belief what others are saying. Then they will know the real truth about the National Debt.

First, since 1981 the Republicans added over 8 trillion dollars to this debt. Bush Jr. is responsible for over 5 trillion. Reagan and Bush Sr. are responsible for the rest. This leaves the Democrats (Clinton and Obama) with over 2.8 trillion dollars added to the Debt.

Also Bush left Obama with a 700 Billion dollar Bill that was passed under Bush’s Presidency. At the end of 2008 a bill was passed by the House and the Senate for the bailout of Wall Street. It was implemented in 2009 under Obama’s Presidency. So far, Obama has added 700 billion dollars to the debt.

It’s seem to me that the people who blame Obama are blind. They turn their blind eye towards the truth. When they realize this, hopefully they will change their way before it is too late. There is so much negativity and lying going on that this society will fall like any other society. This is one of the signs of a failing civilization. Each great civilization has fallen. With all this negative attitude, much more negative attitude is created.

I don’t agree with most of what Obama is doing, about 85%. I just want people to know the truth about current issues. The Democrats and Republicans don’t want YOU to know the truth. That is their way to control the American people. You talk about Freedom. Neither party is showing the Freedom that we need. I don’t feel the freedom. Neither from Republicans nor the Democrats.

Sollution: Let each party (Republican and Democrats) pay back what they added to the national debt. Over 8 trillion dollars for the Republicans and over 2.8 trillion dollars for the Democrats. The parties are the ones responsible for this reversable "hole" they made. Blame Obama and all the other Presidents who significantly added to the debt. Let's start at 1981 under Reagan's Presidency.

Where were YOU when the debt reached 10 trillion dollars in 2008? There is no way to recover from that. Unless we have the people responsible for the debt. Republicans will have to pay over 8 trillion dollars (From 1981 till now). Democrats will have to pay a bit more than 2.8 trillion dollars. Do the math? Do the research? BTW Bush passed a 700 billion dollar bill for the bailout of Wall Street at the end of 2008. Now Obama got stuck with this bail out. So when people say Obama added 1.4 trillion dollars to the deficit. Wrong? He added a little than 700 billion dollars so far. It is also always easy to blame the new person for everything that has happened. Obama is not the best President and has a lot to learn. He got stuck with a huge national debt, a terrible economy (mostly created by Republicans), and so on. Be a man, own up to what YOU (Democrats and Republicans) have created??? There is now way out of this situation. If you know how, tell me. So far nobody really has come with a real solution. Once people realize they are greedy, selfish, and blind, maybe then it will be possible to save this civilization. If not, this civilization will fall like any other civilization. Stand up, be a man/woman and own up to your mistakes (Democrats and Republicans). Open your eyes and realize what you are doing.

There is no way an economy can be ruined within a 9 month period. This takes years. And those are Bush's years. But still many people blame Obama only. Face the truth. Face the facts. Republicans and Democrats are to blame.

It's histerical to watch the Democrats flee from Obamas mediocre attempts at an economic recovery. It's kinda of like leaving a drunk in charge of a Bar! The numbers above reflect the cost of the war for George W. Bush. However, one gentleman earlier made reference too WWII, pertaining to spending and bringing us out of a recession! What he forgot was that we actually won that war and that the price tag was never put on the Democrats. The war costs for the Democrats eminent defeat in Afghanistan has not been tallied up for the Obama administration either! We may not have a country left after the war or Health-Care, but it will be fun listening to their excuses. America has finally awakened!(10.2% UNEMPLOYMENT on the books and 14.4% off the books is unacceptable) Obamas poll numbers continue to drop like a rock and justifiably so!

[…] Obama in office. Clouding the exculpatory narrative is that the Obama administration has since increased the massive spending of the Bush years. It’s no coincidence that the federal budget deficit has soared to record-high $1.42 trillion for […]

While it is correct to say that Bush and Obama share responsibility for the 2009 budget, that is incomplete.

From CBO's January 2009 budget report, released on January 7, 2009: "The ongoing turmoil in the housing and financial markets has taken a major toll on the federal budget. CBO currently projects that the deficit this year will total $1.2 trillion…"

So, $1.2TT is Bush's.

Further, a SIGNIFICANT amount of the forecast deficits for FY2010 onward are due to decreased tax revenues as a result of pre-Obama Washington wrecking our economy.

Whether you attribute that to former Goldman Sachs employees working in the Bush Adminstration, former Goldman Sachs employees working int eh Clinton Administration, or former Goldman Sachs employees writing Phil Gramm's terrible deregulation legislation, it all happened before Obama.

Instead of talking about the Deficit… why not talk about the National Debt? You know, that thing GWB doubled, and how he outspent every past US President COMBINED?

And let's also not forget how Bush/Cheney cooked the books by keeping their eight years of failed wars out of their deficit figures by using "supplimentals". Unlike the "Fiscal Conservatives", Obama isn't trying to hide his spending- all the war funding is right there in his budget.

I would like to add that the great drop from positive in 2000 and 2001 to negative in 2002 thru 2003 is in a great part due to rebuilding a military that had been negelected by the Clinton administration. Bush had to pay the bills that had been ignored for eight years, plus late charges and interest fees. Just like any other bill, they will come due and they will cost more if not paid on time. The 2003-2005 costs were basically for "up-armored" vehicles. All that R&D and testing doesn't come cheap. Democrats, who were responsible for ignoring military needs prior to Bush, were the loudest and most strident whiners about the military not having "proper" protection. Late in 2004 and years after were the costs of natural disasters and caring for those who were left homeless.

I am curious, what would the budget of the Bush years look like had there been no 9/11 and no Katrina and Rita. Democrats sure took Bush to task for things they should have been taking care of while they were off playing politician instead of fulfilling their duties as world leaders they were elected to be.

All this blaming Bush for this Deficit,he is responsible for some of it.But we also voted in a Democrat congress in 06 and the Democrats losing the war in Afghanistan is America's loss & we will be attacked by terrorist again on our soil.Protecting the American people is on the bottom of Obama's list.The American people have made poor choices before and it has caused us to have major problems,like what happened December 7th,1941.This deficit is the fault of the American voter.

[…] Unprecedented deficit spending for unsustainable entitlements, and accumulation of national debt, now at more than $12 trillion, poses an enormous threat to our economic future. Obama’s proposals will add $13 trillion in deficit spending over the next 10 years. […]

[…] Unprecedented deficit spending for unsustainable entitlements, and accumulation of national debt, now at more than $12 trillion, poses an enormous threat to our economic future. Obama’s proposals will add $13 trillion in deficit spending over the next 10 years. […]

$1.4 TRILLION US DOLLARS are the deficit of Republican/Conservatives 2000-2009 as it was the Republican-WHIGS that FAILED America again, history repeats itself with NO lesson learned. Bush/Cheney & Republicans of all THREE houses & Henry Paulson/Ben Bernanke GAVE $350 BILLION US DOLLARS of $700 BILLION to their PALS in the FAILED corporation BAILOUT.

Incompetent, YES, Republicans have very little to say about their failure, just as Ronald Reagan's incompetence as a President and pretend knowledge of understanding ECONOMICS, "trickle down" effect. The ONLY thing that trickled down was Accountability & Responsibility, those were passed on to us and our great grandchildren, the Republican tax breaks burden.

If Republicans are so proud of being fiscally sound and hawkish, why did we the AMERICAN TAXPAYER end up paying for the FAILURE of CORPORATE big business & Wealthy TAX BREAKS that cost us $2.2 TRILLION US DOLLARS in 2002? As a matter of FACT: Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison & John Cornyn of Texas voted in FAVOR/YES for that Corporate & Wealthy SOCIALIST project!

[…] Unprecedented deficit spending for unsustainable entitlements, and accumulation of national debt, now at more than $12 trillion, poses an enormous threat to our economic future. Obama’s proposals will add $13 trillion in deficit spending over the next 10 years. […]

[…] I will happily agree that congressmen of all shapes, sizes, and party affiliations funnel too much of our money to groups that support them. But when we’re talking about bureaucracy that stifles production and penalizes the most successful through both regulation and the higher taxes required to fund it, which party spends more? And where is President Obama in all this? He promoted himself as the voice of “smarter government” and bipartisanship; as someone who would “trim the fat” and halt runaway spending. With help from a Democrat-controlled Congress, that’s going great: […]

[…] Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures from The Heritage Foundation – President Barack Obama has quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package. The Washington Post has a great graphic which helps put President Obama’s budget deficits in context of President Bush’s. […]

Please, don't confuse those poor Democrats with the facts. It makes all of those broken campaign promises about change and ending the war, look even worse! Does this by any chance include Obamas new Afghan war expenditures or their more recent 1.2 Trillion dollar spending bill? Maybe we can bail-out Greece while were at it!

The current deficit is not due to money spent by Obama, but mainly due to Bush Bailout and 20% drop in tax revenues caused by the recession. If Obama does not spend a single penny, we still be in debt over the next decade for 17 trillion, due to large amounts of debt incurred by prior administrations, interest rates on those debts, and the lack of tax revenues by a the most serious recession since the great depression. In addition, expenditures such as health care are expected to increase, since no action had been taken by prior administrations to curtail cost. So please,keep the facts straight. The fact that the debt is under Obama, does not mean is due to Obama.

The day Obama walked into the white house, our country had 11 trillion in debt, the worse recession in over 50 years, the largest goverment expansion ever, a drop in exports over the past years of about 3%, and the worst political climate in generations.

The least the republicans should do is help clean up this mess, Do not be blaming everyone for their fiscal insanity.

I can't determine from reading this whether the writer is intentionally trying to mislead his readers on the cause of the deficit or whether he really doesn't understand it himself. This part is just ridiculous…."given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious."

The stimulus package was spread out over multiple years and barely is 15% of the current budget deficit, so the author of the piece was only off by 350% or so. Nice work.

[…] deficit hit a record $1.42 trillion. The One’s estimated deficits, according to the CBO, will dwarf that of his predecessor’s. And yet, here he stands reinventing himself as some sort of deficit hawk? We’re supposed to […]

These graphs are too single narrowed out, If Bush brought financial devestation then why is Obama blamed for having to clean up his mess? Its the same like saying 'if i set your house on fire , then its your fault for the costs for rebuilding that house,

No

See it differently, if Bush didn't create such a huge big mess in the first place then Obama wouldn't have needed to take expensive measures to clean up that mess to begin with. This is a form of corrupted reversed logic that completely disregards the outrageous spending , remember the economic crisis started under bush, in other words this is already proof that bush has send America into bankrupcy.

It occurred to me that though the President submits a budget, it is actually the Congress that authors and approves all spending bills. Since there is no line-item veto then the President's power is somewhat limited in what he can accomplish concerning budget reduction. Therefore, the Congress should be held accountable for our burgeoning, rather exploding, national debt. Obama, while he may bask in the glory of his legacy "healthcare reform" is nothing more than a stuffed suit. He should, however, pay a political price in the 2012 election. Of more urgent importance is the congressional elections of 2010. It is time to replace the spendthrifts in Washington, who apparently believe that our tax dollars are similar to a credit card with no limits and thus feel no compunction about their disastrous habit, with people who understand that the dollars they are spending come from individuals and families. These people, no matter which label they affix to themselves (ie. Republican, Democrat, TEA Party, etc.) MUST be fiscally conservative and understand that they bear full responsibility for their votes and actions.

The time for change is imminent. The message that must be sent in the 2010 election must be crystal clear–if you waste our money you WILL be held accountable, and that message must be delivered in a manner where there can be no misunderstanding. They must be soundly defeated in unmistakable numbers.

The REAL truth about the federal debt is what the debt has been from, not for. The REAL truth is that the bulk of our federal debt comes from our wars and our military. Under George W., his wars were NOT in the budget, nor was a ton of "supporting" stuff spent on the war. All of this was considered "off budget". Thus, the reported budget deficits in the chart of this article would be doubled under George W. if the "off budget" items were included. They DID get included in the borrowings of the government and the TRUE debt for the year.

You know the military gets paid whether they are at war or practicing every day. The use tremendous amounts of ammunition and jet fuel training. All you hear is the cost. The government employees get paid the same whether they are working or in the coffee shop. FBI CIA DOE on and on. The government is a money pit.

March 24, 2009 Rocky, Boise ID wrote: That the numbers for the Iraq and Afghan war are not included in the budget and were counted as emergency or supplemental spending. It is obvious he did not read the entire article with updates. because it states unequivocally that costs of those wars are included. By 2019 the CBO estimate projects about a third more than the White House estimates. The WH continuously skews the figures in their favor. The interest alone will destroy this country and our way of life.

[…] The One? The miracle of jobs “created or saved.” Jesus? Water into wine. The One? Money from thin air. Jesus? Capable of being everywhere all at once. The One? Ditto. And of course, people have been […]

Copy this link, save it in your favorites, email it to all your friends. Any time you hear the same old looking back "Bush bashing", send it to them and everyone you know and they know. Get involved. In 2010 drag 10 friends with you to the polls. No longer will the "silent majority" of this country be silent anymore.

I've read a lot from the beginning, Thomas B-Virginia- March 25 of 09,, his last statment was "America is dying", that really resonated with me. He is right, is any one else taking notice? At this point is blaming our current state at either president have of any real value? Whats the point in that? How about we instead look for solutions! As you read my thoughts you'll find my thinking is strongly on the conservative Repulican side, however I'm finding lately that the whole current political realm so needs a face lift / shall we say. If I were to go independent, that would be detramental. So in sticking to my values, I am stuck staying Republican.

So, to start off with, our current president needs to be removed, and all of his admin. however that should happen. Our president obviously likes socialism, in every fasion possible, let him and ALL those who are like minded go to France or Russia. He could have a taste of communism in Russia. Socialism is not far from communism.

Our American people need to wake up and go back to values that have been so badly lost. People need to realize they are worth respecting themselves, if you've made some mistakes, so be it, you blend in with the rest of us. But we can come back to where right is just right, and wrong is just that, wrong, nothing in between. Some true accountablilty would be a good thing. I like, well love the America of the past. The values we had back then is what I'm talking about, and I'm not an over the hill fart.

obama seems to think that all nations need to be equal to each other, including the country he is president over. What foul thinking is that? Thomas B of Virginia also said that we need to spend money, a lot of money if we are going to stay safe and secure as a nation. obama is not willing to do that.

Carol in Georgia wrote that the White House always scews the $$ to their favor. All politicians do that. I strongly dislike the democrates, however even the Republicans do that. Thats what I mean about the whole political realm needs a face lift, that would have to be the Republicans to do that if they want my vote! It seems to me that this president and his admin may be sending us to bankrumpsy so we will be dependant on the goverment, which is what they so despratly want. Oh, by the way, did I mention socialism?

There is too much to read here, I am not willing to read all of this, that means not many will read what I have here either, so there is no point in going on. (Sorry about my spelling)

1 more thing to say. Seek first Gods Kingdom and His Rightiousness, all will be given to you. I'm obviously paraphrasing. That would be a great place to start with. Who ever has ears to hear, let us lead by example. Let us lovingly shake our envirment up tremendouly!!

[…] Originally Posted by Bung So bush didn’t rape the nations wealth by going to a war that only helped his big business and nothing else that will probably have repercussions into the next century? I’m not defending Bush. (You really need to quit playing the "blame Bush" broken record.) The question is whether BamBam is worse or not. To an objective observer things are clearly worse. The numbers are quite clear in that regard. When you consider who the people were (community activist groups) who put the pressure on banks to make the NINJA loans which in turn brought about the financial meltdown you will like get a clue that things are likely to get much worse unless BamBam and Co. make some serious changes to their agenda. As far as the debt goes it’s pretty obvious. link […]

This week many are saying that government stimulous doesn't work when you pull money out of the private sector (massive taxes or printing dollars) and then claim to put it back in again…it is a wash. Government is growing jobs now but where do they get their money for payrolls? You can NOT give Obama a pass by throwing mud on Bush; let's get back to free market capitalism and get government out of our lives.

the numbers aren't biased, they just don't reflect the fact that massive government deficits were a fait accompli by the time Obama took office in January. would the republicans really not have passed a stimulus package in some form? even if it were tax cut based, they would have tried to stem the job losses with government money. they wouldn't have sat back and waited for the unemployment rate to hit 14 percent, teachers laid off, state's having trouble funding medicaid, etc. the republicans are responsible for the necessity of spending the money in the first place because of their idiotic free market fundamentalism. turning wall street into a casino (literally) is not supported by free market ideology, yet these idiots continue to delude themselves by continuing to block an effective financial regulatory regime. greenspan recently said that he could've clamped down on the bubble early on, but that we would have had a poor economy–one with 10 percent unemployment. This so-called genius must not realize that we've now taken on 1 trillion in Fed obligations, 800B in stimulus, 700B in bailouts, and we STILL have 10 percent unemployment. All you republicans loved this guy, now you have nothing to say about him. he presided over the whole disaster, but not without help from Clinton's destruction of Glass Steagall (acceding to a Republican congress and Greenspan) and Bush's subsidies for mortgage downpayments.

No on is interested in the wrong headed opinions of a Canuck. You dont know the first thing about what is happening here in the US. It was the easy money policies of the Fed 2002-07, that caused the economic collapse, not Bush.

[…] Obama in office. Clouding the exculpatory narrative is that the Obama administration has since increased the massive spending of the Bush years. It’s no coincidence that the federal budget deficit has soared to record-high $1.42 trillion for […]

There are lies, damned lies and then there are statistics. Presenting the raw budget data without explaining and describing the need for that spending is like operating on a patient without explaining the necessity of the surgery.

It is amazing how quickly we all forget as the DOW hovers around 10000 how close we came towards the end of the Bush era to a complete international economic meltdown. However you think we got to that state Sean and BIll will tell you it was Fannie and Freddie and there is indeed plenty of blame to go around.

Criticizing the President and Congress for running large deficits in an effort to save the economy is like chiding the fire department for wasting water as they put out the fire in your house.

Per the CBO, the budget deficit for 2009 was over 1 trillion dollars 2 weeks BEFORE Obama was even sworn in. Additionally, due to massive population changes, (the baby boom generation beginning to retire-going from their peak earning and tax contributing years, to a drain on the treasury), things were going to look very bad for any president taking office at this time. I believe we will see some entitlement adjustments after 2010 which should moderate this bloody scenario, but the bottom line is this-we saw this coming. And the best we could do facing this population bomb was to exacerbate it to the fullest by increasing entitlement spending, and war expenditures, all while giving the largest tax cut in human history during the Bush years.

let me guess. you're a christian and you watch fox channel. obama became president in the wiorst financial crisis in history.

Do you think he is the one spending all the money? are you ignorant? the fed is the entity at the helm of this recovery, not obama. and would you have preferred obama to let aig and the rest of the investment and commercial banks fail?

it was a neccessary evil.

do you also condone spending 1 trillion plus on the iraq war to no where and with no solution? gee 2 trillion to make the u.s. even more hated and less secure.

i'm a tax payer and if im going to complain, its that the 2 largest spending administrations in maerican history, prior to the credit crunch, have been republican. so how is it that democrats spend so much money? seems republicans spend more? i thought republican administrations were supposed to reduce spending? strange.

It is also incongruent that the right complain about de-regulation by democrats that caused over lending yet they complain about regulation now. De-regulation was the corner stone of the Regan administration and he was the first to have a wall streeter as his financial advisor and he was the first to dismantle the glass steagal act and Clinton was the one that dismantled what was left of glass steagal. Regan dismantling the glass steagal act is in part responsible for the mess that has occurred today. so which is it? the right is for de-regulation or against it? and why didnt the right complain when regan or clinton de-regulated and dismantled the glass steagal act?

i sure wish the right would stop talking out of both sides of their mouths…

You neglect to adequately account for how Obama is spending large amounts of stimulus to negotiate us out of a financial meltdown that Bush presided over. There must be some way to put that into your graphs.

Short memories people.Bush took office(with the aid of the Supreme Court),and proceeded to spend,spend,spend.He turned a surplus into a deficit in less than a year.1 stinkin year!!!!He oversaw a ill advised war, the collapse of our lending institutions,the collapse of the housing market,Enron,job losses,and everything else that went wrong.I might also add 6 of his 8 years Republicans controlled both houses(since 1994?).Yet somehow it`s Obama`s fault?…And the Tea Party?Are they about what`s right,and wrong,or about right wing politics?Since they NEVER protetsted under Bush I assume it was the $ amount they protest,and not the fact Bush spent much more than he had,and created the biggest deficit to date!.So….where`s the "Conservative" in "right wing politics"?We must be talking about conservative religous views,because I can`t even remember the last fiscally conservative President we had.Either party.Before you assume….I DID NOT vote for Obama.I think it`s time we stopped calling politicians Conservative if they aren`t.And they aren`t.Nixon,Reagan,Bush,and Bush were not conservative.Not even close….So do I need advice from the same people who oversaw the collapse?No…from the people who just stood by,and did nothing?No……The hypocricy is amazing!The previous administration destroyed the economy with the aid of both houses,and somehow these wing nuts here never even mention it.Why?Because they voted for it,supported it,and loved it.After all he was a Conservative…..yeah rite……

People reading the numbers obviously don't use too much critical thinking skills. The deficit expansion from both wars, the stimulus bill, expanding Medicare coverage, and other programs under Bush are factored into the deficit numbers under Obama. The economic crash, very significant in size, has also greatly reduced the amount of tax revenues expected which also had a huge impact on the size of the deficit.

President Obama did not create the situation he is faced with today, and granted he hasn't done anything except make it worse (arguments can be made about the economics behind a stimulus plan, but I'm not an economist so I'll leave that to history). Anyone attributing the current state of our economy to Obama is not doing them self or their country any good by ignoring the truth. As long as we lie to ourselves and allow politicians to play us against one other the real problem will never be solved. BOTH parties exploit their power to fleece the taxpayers as much as they can get away with.

Stop allowing yourselves to get played by one party or the other for as long as they have you "on their side" both sides will win and we will all lose. My fear is this country is already too undulation to understand what is happening, and politicians are too entrenched in the current system of corruption for change to ever take place without a total collapse our of government.

Bush got a good start point from Clinton, but he lose IRAQ war and owe over a $2.5 trillion dollers, so he is not a good US president. Obama got a awful point from Bush, we need give him time to finish his president jobs before commenting him. But Bush is a really loser as a US president, and he is a nice guy for China and India.

When you consider that President Bush inherited a $250 billion annual budget surplus and then handed off to President Obama a trillion dollar annual deficit you get an indication as to where and when we went wrong. Your budget analysis for 2009 shares the responsibility between Bush & Obama whereas the CBO (in a report I obtained on your web site) indicates that 1.186 trillion of the deficit is attribted to the Bush budget and 228 billion to the Obama budget. That's huge! Obama has spent his first year in office attempting to FIX the problems and deficits he has inherited from the previous administration. This is not exactly what we were hoping for when we chose Obama to lead our country in necessary reform. It only angers me more each day when I think our country more than doubled the national debt during this time period. As you do your budget analysis you should create a separate column for spending that is designed to stimulate our broken economy. Unfortunately, a situation like this requires a step back before you can proceed forward. The size of this step is proportionate to the size of the problem, which, in this case, is HUGE! Realisticly, the poor folks of our country and the middle class (however you would like to define it) will not be able to solve this problem with their financial resources. They have been "milked" out of all excess funds. Perhaps the wealthy and large corporate interests who have benefited over the years in America's "land of opportunity" will be willing to accept the burden of responsibility. We could all look at it as a "Thank-you" to America. Yes, we need to strive, once again, for a balanced budget. It's all about two simple things, increase revenue and decrease spending. Make the hard decisions but don't "sacrifice" the middle class and poor or the important social issues of our time. We can't put off at least some level of health care reform and we need to deal with the long term entitlement deficit projections. We can't keep ignoring the problems. They only continue to get worse. And yes, get behind the current administration. President Obama is not responsible for these problems. Instead, help him "fix" the problems by sharing your ideas. We have been successfully divided in this country. As a result, we are subject to being "conquered"! It's all happening from within. But…..it's not quite over yet.

Some critics charge that the new policies pursued by President Obama and the 111th Congress generated the huge federal budget deficits that the nation now faces. In fact, the tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the economic downturn together explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years.

The deficit for fiscal 2009 was $1.4 trillion and, at an estimated 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), was the largest deficit relative to the size of the economy since the end of World War II. Under current policies, deficits will likely exceed $1 trillion in 2010 and 2011 and remain near that figure thereafter.

The events and policies that have pushed deficits to astronomical levels in the near term, however, were largely outside the new Administration’s control. If not for the tax cuts enacted during the Presidency of George W. Bush that Congress did not pay for, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that began during that period, and the effects of the worst economic slump since the Great Depression (including the cost of steps necessary to combat it), we would not be facing these huge deficits in the near term.

While President Obama inherited a bad fiscal legacy, that does not diminish his responsibility to propose policies to address our fiscal imbalance and put the weight of his office behind them. Although policymakers should not tighten fiscal policy in the near term while the economy remains fragile, they and the nation at large must come to grips with the nation’s deficit problem. But we should all recognize how we got where we are today

I think everyone is trying to give either administration too much credit for being able to control the spending of congress. If you combine the two and look at the market performance, you can easily point to when things changed. No one gives either credit for the stock market climbing to over 14,000 before the democrats took over one of the congressional houses. 10,000 -> 14,000 is a great economic success. Then we had to create a public panic run on the market by not having proper oversight of lending habits. A ticking time bomb many were aware of combined with an orchestrated fear campaign. The democrats knew they could not win with a successful economy in war time. So, a 5,000 point drop in the market was needed. This was chosen to happen. They had to create the panic to get a democrat in the white house. Not saying either administration did all they could to reduce the size of government (neither has). Just saying the public should be allocating a large portion of their anger towards congress. Spending, appropriations controls, earmarks, graft, etc. Spread the investigation. I wish Reagan would have gotten the line item veto so the pork and payoffs could be eliminated from the base bill spending.

Where did you get your numbers, 10 billion a month for a war lasting 8 years is more than 400 billion alone. Not mentioning the 880 billion as the guy was leaving with all that money at the very end of his term. If he didn't pass the bailout to know where, he wouldn't have got the cash for his buddies at the banks, who didn't need it because everything was made up just to take as much cash as they could. Evil men from 2000-2008 Don't believe a word you read ever again! THIS IS PROPAGANDA AND NOT FACTUAL!

We all seem to forget our wonderful country's legendary 3-congressional reps that really created this debacle. The Almighty Christopher Dodd, Barney Frank and Ted Kennedy.

Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank had personal interest in passing legislation that allowed the credit crisis to occur – legislation that weakened lending oversight in order for them to make a mint on sub-prime mortgages. There is a reason certain reps are not running for re-election after being in their respective seats for decades.

Obama is a disaster. Bush was a disaster. Clinton was a disaster. You can go back in time and find massive massive flaws in every single administration to ever take office. Why? The Executive Branch is by far the weakest of the three legislative branches of the government. Obama may have proposed his legislation, but Congress signed off on it. Congress just approved another $1T in deficit spending (check the news today). The problem is the American public refuses to do research and make intelligent decisions about who they elect for any office. Congress elects the President, not the people. The electorate, not the popular vote, elects the President. So, it's who you put into Congress that is voting for President. If you make poor choices about your congressman, you make a poor decision for a President as well. Our two party system in this country has eliminated independent thought and decision making. Parties make decisions, not individuals. Congress is one big labor union…the bosses make the decisions and everyone else just pays dues to belong to the union. People need to start demanding more from their legislators if you want to see change. The Supreme Court justices should not be appointments, but votes that take place every 20 years…maintain the generational provision of the Supreme Court (purpose is to keep government in check by keeping an older generation at the helm, thus slowing the progress of government, thus avoiding a collapse like in Russia due to change coming too quickly) but make it a vote. The appointments simply perpetuate the bad choices made by the voters for Congress……..who elects the President……..who appoints the Supreme Court Justices.

Unfortunately, minorities will always vote Democrat…9/10 times. Special interests love democrats who love big government. Until the poor realize that voting democrat will not save them and will only keep them poor, the democrats will always hold that card. Republicans will continue to drive the wedge between the rich and the poor, thus vilifying the rich and making them a target for the democrats. The only solution is to get away from a 2-party system and turn towards the independents…50% of the voters are registered independent. This process is broken…the whole thing is broken. We need a major re-boot. We had a lot of years of prosperity once the Great Depression ended. It sparked small business creation, technological development, increased GDP and GNP, lower unemployment. Then, it was mucked up again. This "Great Recession" as it is now being dubbed has not hurt enough people to force a change. The "Great Recession" in no way compares to the Great Depression. The media is hyping it as such, but it isn't. Yes unemployment is high, but not anywhere as high as it was in the years following the crash. I don't see Hooverville's set up in Central Park yet. The drama surrounding this recession is ridiculous. The amount of money that has been wasted by the last two administrations on "bailouts" could have provided every American over the age of 18 with enough money to pay off 1/2 their mortgage and purchase an American car, thus bailing out two industries, removing government from the picture and saving a lot of Americans from losing their homes. Poor decisions by a lot of people put us where we are. Banks let people who couldn't afford to buy houses buy houses, people who knew they shouldn't buy houses bought them anyway because they saw a loophole. Government passed regulations making predatory lending easy and legal. EVERYONE SCREWED UP and we are now all reaping the rewards of poor decisions. Everyone needs to man up and move on. **Keep in mind when I say everyone, I mean a majority, not literally every single person…there are plenty of people who didn't do stupid things.** I am sick of everyone pointing fingers…repubs at dems, dems at repubs. Everyone screwed up…corporations, legislators, home buyers, the Presidents…EVERYONE. Expanding government is not going to fix it. We need a reboot. A complete ousting of every government official from an elected post. A new election of every seat of every government for every elected position in the US. Good, bad or indifferent. If people think their legislators have seriously not harmed them with their decisions…vote them back in. Otherwise, put someone else in there and start over. Halt ALL non-essential government spending (this includes bailouts, government owned buy-outs of corporations, banks, etc.) Stop all spending except for standard government operations and re-evaluate everything. It's time for a change. It needs to be big. What's scary to me is if people actually cared in this country the way they did in 1776 and 1861, we would be at war right now with ourselves trying to revolt against the establishment. Where is our sense of patriotism. Supporting our troops abroad is patriotic. Great. I support our troops…my family is military. However, as Thoreau said, the greatest form of Patriotism is dissent.

This may be unimportant to many of you, but keep in mind that it is Congress that passes the spending bills for the President to sign. At no time during the Bush Administration did the Republican Party have a super majority, so although they held the purse strings, they had to negotiate with the Democrats to get the War funded. You can also see in the charts where the Bush tax cuts kicked in. From Jan 2007 on, the Democrats have had control of the purse strings. Granted, Bush had to sign the budgets into law to support the surge in 2008, and since, even with the tax cuts in place, we've had more pork barrel spending and Congressional travel than ever before contributing to this oncoming train wreck.

[…] is simply not correct. Last March, the Heritage Foundation posted comparisons of the Bush deficit vs. the Obama deficit. They demonstrate the many ways Obama is continuing down the same path as his predecessor, […]

I have a Graph to share with the group. This graph is based on the actual TOTAL numbers released by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Bureau of the Public Debt ( http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/his… ). The graph displayed on this page is a joke. I will copy this prior to posting. If this does not post on this site, I will copy this to 10 other sites with a link to this site. The Federal Government REALLY needs to look at Republican 'trap sites', they seem to be popping up everywhere.

Tomm face the facts people arent going to work hard to give you their money communisum has always failed and always will. We are the second if not first highest taxed country in the world did it ever occure to you washington needs to learn how to count? it is not a fact the tax payers need to pay more it is a fact our government needs to stay in a budget that fits our big fat taxes we already pay.

Time for real change vote them out. the Democrats have proved over the last three years they do not know how to count and the people are sick of the democratic spending.

[…] expanded the US deficit to $700B in 8 years. President Obama managed to just about quadruple the US deficit to 2.1T in ONE YEAR. Thanks to the Washington Post we can visualize this a bit more.. Via the Washington […]

[…] lie. Bush left office with a ~$430 billion deficit. Obama’s policies have taken it to about $1.8 trillion, with forecasts out to the next decade saying it will be on average comfortably over $1 trillion […]

[…] pull us out of the recession in short order–that before he said it was going to take awhile.) Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures | The Foundry: Conservative Policy News. Republicans are not trying to 'spend us into prosperity' and resist that mentality. Republicans […]

Figures lie and liars figure. It may be ok for people setting in the budget office to toss these figures around, because they understand the complexity of compounding interest and other items that are not obvious to those of us out in the boonies that don't have that first rate knowledge.

You attempt to frighten people when you really understand the necessity of increased spending to solve problems.

These are not President Bush or President Clinton problems these are problems brought on by a long term spending spree that has taken place. When times were good we reduced taxes and did not pay down the debt the way we should. Two wars, expensive war material cost, floods, other natural disasters and an attempt to make people whole, many time better than they were before the disaster.

Let's stop blaming the Politicians and start blaming the people that want everything and not pay for anything. Better roads – No Taxes or fee. Better Rail Transportation – No taxes or fees. (STOP TELLING THE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES THAT THEY CAN HIRE A PROFESSIONAL ARMY AT A $1,000,000 A SERVICE MAN AND FIGHT WARS ALL OVER THE WORLD) AND NOT PAY ANY TAXES OR FEES. HOW MUCH IS THE BUDGET GOING UP FOR ALL OF THE MEDICAL CARE THAT THIS MODERN WAR IS GOING TO COST.

In summation this is a national problem brought on by foolish people that want to blame anyone but themselves for the problem that they are in. Short sighted and maybe a little greedy and it seems to me while claiming to being so willing to do their part always complain when asked to help someone who has less (30,000,000 medically uninsured citizens) I hope you understand that all of us need to wake up!!!

There is one glaring problem with blaming the 2009 deficit on Obama. That budget was signed into law by George Bush in 2008! Nice try guys. And that same budget created structural deficits of 8 Trillion dollars over 10 years, because no one figured out how to pay for the 2 wars, the new department of homeland security, the Medicare Plan D or had a strategy for making the current Medicare and Social Security plans cash flow positive and solvent. This was all left to the next guy, in addition to the piss poor economy. GW was a terrible conservative, but all of these "born-again conservative" Republicans who were in the house and senate between 2001 and 2004 are the biggest hypocrits in the world because they set the ball in motion. If they had stayed the course with pay-go, the national debt and deficits would have been far lower.

[…] Originally Posted by xris Considering the debt was created by the mismanagement of the previous administration your views are obviously biased. And now, the facts. Obama has tripled the debt in the just over one year since he has been in office. Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures | The Foundry: Conservative Policy News. […]

At 73 I have trouble with my memory sometimes but seems to me I recall hearing on Fox news that Pres. Bush called in Pres. elect Obama for conference BEFORE he signed the bailout because Pres. Obama would inherit whatever was to come. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think not.

Have you ever heard of ROI (return on investment)? Bush/Chaney had no investment strategy for America, it was all about protecting the old guard contractors (war machine) and big oil. Anyone see any WMD on Iraq lately? Thats why we wnet right? wrong see above for why we went. WAR has no ROI.. Education, Infrastructure rebuild in USA, Investment in technology, and heath care cost reduction that lowers workmen's compensation that allows things to be built here again all have ROI. Chaney talked lowering taxes for ROI but Obama is putting taxes to work in areas of ROI. Its all he can do, it's a mess. We need to spend wisely ie: spend where there is ROI

President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008.

I just went over to the Treasury Debt site and entered in 1/22/2001 and 1/22/2009 (from the day Bush took office until the day he left office). According to those numbers the debt was $5.72 Trillion when he took office and $10.62 Trillion when he left office. Isn't that a $4.9 Trillion increase in the debt?

So what you are saying is that Bush is responsible for the huge deficits in 2009. And yet the Tea Partiers are blaming it on Obama. Looks like things will get better once we get past the effects of over spending during the Bush years. And health care reform is projected by the CBO to bring down the deficit in 10 years. It is obvious the anger is purely partisan – where was the outrage when the Republicans were spending out of control?

You conservatives have spent 8 years defending Bush. It didn't take Bush but a year and a half to bring about a deficit. Then he started that war in Iraq based on nothing and you all supported him. The current deficit is in great part due to Bush's two "tax refunds" of $300 and then $600 as well as the Iraq war and Afghanistan wars.

You're very good at lying and spinning. Bush left a horrible legacy of overspending and deficits and left us with a nice fat IOU to China and maybe you constituents like to believe your lies but not all of us do.

Bush left us with a WMD (W's Maddening Deficit) and now you want to blame it on the man who has been in office for a year!

Conservatives do not provide a civil society. They provide a society where gun owners and big business reign supreme and that's all you've ever given this country.

Maybe you need experience before being elected president? Duh. Someone should have explained that to the gullible masses before they cast their vote. Yes we can (ruin this great nation). Just put a complete amateur in charge …

So Bush's final deficit was, either 1.85T or 1.75T, depending on whether the WH or CBO numbers are correct, looking at the numbers for 2009. Of course everyone is aware that a Presidents first year in office, 2009, was budgeted by the last administration, yes?

The difference is that Obama is investing in the US by investing in Education, Energy, healthcare and so on.

Whereas Bush and the republicans took us to a wrong war, spent millions on tax cuts for their wealty friends and a lot of young soldiers died and innocent people in Iraq because Bush wanted to revenge his dad.

Quite frankly, you have to spend if you want to fix anything. And everything is broken in this country that we call Modern and #1 country in the world. We are behind in education, in healthcare, in energy but the old mentality of republicans wants to keep us behind instead of working with this President in fixing these issues.

It is also worth pointing out that while the graph did jump this year the predicted deficit is trending downward which is the right direction now that spending is fully attributable to the current administration and congress.

Ignoring the current administration (as it is hard to analyze current events) We can see large increases in deficit under previous administration. Yes there were attacks on the US but none worse than those performed by our own representatives. Where is the accountability?

I am so tierd of dems vs repub's,,to me I see my government (whatever party) has become more and more corrupt and disfunctional.Playing games,demonizing each others ideas,not working togather AT ALL!! I honestly belive President Obamas intentions are good. And has tried to reach out to republicans,,but how do you begin to work w/ someone who is so stubborn??? It seems republicans would get more of what they want if they would just begin to work w/ the president and democrates. With that said, people see what is going on,whether or not they stand up and protest our gov's actions is another thing. Thanks

I was hoping this article would clarify or undermine Obama's repeated statement that Bush left him a deficit of over a trillion. Is he referring to 2009 or what? 2008 is "only"$400B". What is Obama talking about and if wrong, how does he get away with it? We lay conservative need a lot of statistical help in this data-manipulative obama period.

As Jay Rockefeller said THEY WRITE THE BUDGET. They being Congress. The Bush deficit didn't explode until the Dems controlled Congress. Also Obamas and this Congresses Debt in 3 years will be more than total debt than every years debt added up together

Everyone is saying how Obama hasn't done anything but look at the mess he was left with! Everyone is trying to compare Bush's 2 terms to Obama's one year, give me a break, You guts act like he is Houdini, everything takes time. America is built on a "Get rich quick scheme" and need to realize everything takes time and you don't know what he has to do to pull us out of this mess that Bush created for 8 years! Everyone want to be so segregated and say" I am a Republican" Or "I am a Democrate". You are with this person or that person. We are all one Nation! Give it up people, now is not the time to say what gang you are in. It is our time to stand together as one nation and come together and want the best for ourselves, starting with ourselves. Politicians are the biggest marketeers and business actors of them all. Making you people think that you dont need to take care of your bodies and accepting death at an early age by telling you Obama is Iraqi, a socialist, a communist and you people fall for it! How can someone sell you death? They put you against this person because of this and that person because of that. They dont care about you and until we rise up, care about ourselves and thy neighbor, I dont think we will ever pull it together! Stop worrying about the past and start looking ahead trying to find a solution

Don't let them put you against the person who is trying to help us! That is what they want, To stay rich and for you not to take what they think is theirs. Wake up! if you truly believe that they can compare Obama's one year to Bush's 8 years, they have already minipulated you! wake up! If you are saying Obama is wrong for trying to get a healthcare plan for you to take care of your body! They minipulated you! They sold you DEATH1

Dave NC; check your facts. The Dem congress didnt make any major budget decision or had time to do anything damaging in the litte time they had. Nothing impacting in that way even came before them. What they were saddled with (and why they were voted in in the 1st place) correcting tthe mess they were left with (as Obama and the new Dems were). Same policies that crashed the economy in the late 20's (that New Deal/Dems/new middle class/smal biz growth had to fix) and almost did it again in the 2000's Follow the bouncing ball. "Ray-Guns" gets in and deficit spends us to death, finally realizes tax cuts aren't the way and raises them 3 times, but still manages to triple the ND. Buh Sr follows, quadruples the ND. Clinton: balanced budget and surplus. Bush Jr, back in debt again (over a $trillion). People – just follow the bouncing ball!

VIc, FL: The public school system, as is its purpose, has "taught" you well. Let me at least attempt to correct you a bit…

"Same policies that crashed the economy in the late 20’s (that New Deal/Dems/new middle class/smal biz growth had to fix)…"

–Oh, sorry, but FDR only continued more of the same actions of his predecessor, Herbert Hoover (raised taxes, started public works projects, extended loans to firms in need…the same things Obama wants to do now). This is a quote from Roosevelt advisor Rexford Guy: "We didn't admit it at the time, but practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started." And, according to his treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., the ND didn't fix anything: "We have never made good on our promises…after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started, and an enormous debt to boot!"

“Ray-Guns” gets in and deficit spends us to death, finally realizes tax cuts aren’t the way and raises them 3 times, but still manages to triple the ND."

–This is just embarrassing. The economy expanded under Reagan, and it didn't happen with tax *raises* either. You know that. The source of his deficit was through increased defense spending, which ultimately helped defeat the Soviet Union…handed a nice little "peace dividend" to Clinton, too; and reduced defense spending (along with a thrifty–for a while, anyway–Republican congress) led to a budget surplus. You're welcome.

Mike, Sarasota, FL: (LOL) You call yourself a fiscal Conservative and a social Liberal, but a proud Obama voter…wouldn't that make you at least a HALF-DUPE? You're as much a "former Republican" as the Sun was a former planet.

P.S. Criticizing Bush's outrageous spending, in order to defend Obama's waaaaaaaaaaaay out-of-his-mind spending, is like yelling at the wife for burning dinner, but sparing anger at the kid who burned down the whole dang house!

The primary cause of Obama's deficits are the fall in tax revenues that has attended the worst economic downturn since the Depression. The cost of wars also does not help. Conservatives love to hype the fact that we are at war when it serves their purpose. We are at war. Wars cause deficits. As for his Obama's stimulus plan. It was compose of at least 25% tax cuts. Conservatives like tax cuts. In the economic downtun of 2001, they ran a $400 million deficit composed of tax cuts. The tax cuts are still in place. If John McCain were elected, he would have followed a course that would have resulted in deficits no smaller than Obama's. The only difference is that we wouldn't have to listen to hysteria about the deficit.

I try to hear both sides of every story but I have quite a difficult time finding non-biased conservative analysis. What is so hard about JUST BEING HONEST for once? You mention Obama boosting anti-poverty spending without paying any attention to the why, could it have anything to do with the Great Recession? You mention the bail-outs without admitting the necessity of them. You mention the start up costs of health care reform without mentioning Obama proposes to pay for that, so it won't effect the deficit and in fact, the CBO says it will reduce our projected deficits. I am beginning to believe the truth really DOES have a liberal bias since I can't find honest discussion from the conservative side. Jeepers.

Nice way to mislead with deceptive color-coding that indicates Bush is only responsible for the Blue years and Obama for the red. The budget is submitted one year ahead, therefore, 2009 is Bush's budget deficit.

You say, "Of course, this Washington Post graphic does not perfectly delineate budget surpluses and deficits by administration. President Bush took office in January 2001, and therefore played a lead role in crafting the FY 2002-2008 budgets. Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for the FY 2009 budget deficit that overlaps their administrations, before President Obama assumes full budgetary responsibility beginning in FY 2010."

However, this neglects those structural issues that were pushing the deficits larger prior to anything Obama (or Bush in '09, or '08, etc) had done. It's a little odd to show these deficit snapshots without that important bit of context. Rather, it's perfectly normal to see it in, say, the Washington Post, but a bit disconcerting to see it in a place that usually has a little more thought behind it.

Your update clarifies the question about whether the numbers include the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's fine… but you also should remember that President Bush started those wars. The cost to continue (and hopefully finish) those wars was placed on President Obama's plate before he was elected… unless you want to argue that President Obama could (should) have pulled all our troops out during his first hour in office. Therefore, instead of an analysis which looks solely at the president in charge during the FY in which the expenses occurred, I'd like to see an analysis of which president's policy is responsible for each portion of the spending. If you lay the responsibility for the continued war spending at President Bush's feet, the numbers will change.

I think you guys at the Foundry are twisting the news. Bush came into power created 2 wars. 1 false and the other argueably important and took office with surpluses from the Clinton years.

He implemented failed finacial policies like deregulation that in turn caused our economy to collapse. The economy collapsed during the presidental campaign and the decisin was a large bail out package.

To assign this package to Obama when it is the result of bad Bush decisions is wrong.

I do understand that by your statements from the Washington Post, that The Foundry feels that Obama has been overspending the nation into bankruptcy. Why has this all of a sudden become the conservatives new attack approach. Are these not the same individiduals who repeatedly added exorbant tag-ons to budgets from when they were in power. Most of the problems with America's policies has been from the last 8 years. Obama is just now trying to do what little change he can to a system that is sooo overbloated. unfortunately no one in the USA knows how to save money, or better said "not spend money". Both parties should just suck up the crap they have been throwing at each other, and really try and come together to workout a feasible plan to help balance the budget, because in reality I dont think any American Politician has any idea how to do that currently.

Obama = Speculation by the same experts that have been wrong for 20 years.

Americans = bitch, whine, moan, take sides, blame others, come up with a stupid slogan and pretend you are not the problem. Spend $1.03 Trillion in one year on military spending, less than $7 Billion on education and wonder why everybody is so stupid. Turn on Fox news and watch some airhead ask if the VP is a pinhead. Put a teabag on the rear view mirror and maybe sarcastic bumber sticker. Go USA. We deserve to go down the shit tubes. We did it to ourselves. Bitch, whine, moan, repeat, ignore history, think only of ourselves and specifically the money that we don't actually have but pretend we do. Yea – change congress again, that will do it. Voting as our sole political effort. Oh and tweeting. My first time, but a lifestyle for many I have no doubt.

I think that you need to give Obama a little more time folks, lets be honest you gave Bush 8 years and some people still support his time in office. Bush and his administration deep rooted some poor policies in the American system during their term and we all saw the effects of that as Bush was leaving office. I'm not saying the job Obama is doing is perfect, but at least he's attempting to correct a flawed system and not perpetuate it. Like it or not, reversing it can't be completed by just the "hard working American people," it requires capital and politics which is a dangerous combination. Hopefully they are able to find a balance between the two and start actually improving the standard of living in America. What you don't need is more political divide that stymies any progress.

While both Bush and Obama share responsibility for the $1.85 trillion deficit in 09, I submit that Bush (and Republican policies that caused the need for TARP) is responsibile for the lion's share of the 09 deficit –about $1.2 trillion belongs to Bush ($400 billion, which is what he ran up on 2008 and is a proxy for 2009, and $785 billion or so for TARP (attributable in my view to deregulation of the banking industry under Republican rule). The Republicans aren't against deficits, they're against paying for them, and they're for pinning the deficit tail on the Democratic donkey!! How expedient for them.

There is enough hyperbole and rearranging of facts in this debate to cover both sides with shame. If BS translated into dollars, we'd easily pay off our debt and have plenty to spare.

A Heritage Foundation analysis is going to be pro Republican and anti Democrat and anti Obama. That is as predictable as the sunrise.

If you want to see who is ultimately responsible for the whole mess, look in the mirror. We, the American people, will not elect anyone who tells us we need to knuckle down and sacrifice to dig ourselves out of this mess.

Going back to Ronald Reagan (for whom I'm sure there is a shrine or two at the Heritage Foundation), we've elected politicians who tell us we can cut taxes and increase spending. Bush the senior correctly dubbed it "Voodoo Economics"…before signing on as Reagan's VP.

Reagan quadrupled our national debt. He didn't cut spending or shrink the size of our government, he increased it.

Fast forward to Bush the junior. Tax cuts for the wealthy, increased government spending. The debt goes from 5 to 10 or 11 trillion. No fiscally conservative policies to be found in the Bush/Cheney years.

Obama borrowed a page from the Reagan playbook and promised no tax increases for the middle class to get elected. Whether he'll be able to keep that promise remains to be seen.

Republicans have suddenly gotten religion over budget deficits now that a Democrat is in the White House. It's completely hypocritical when you have Republican senators holding up routine appointments because they want a bigger share of pork for their constituents.

Our country is in deep trouble. We need the D's and R's to work together for the common good. But Republicans have decided that being a roadblock will translate into votes next November. Hey, it could just as easily be the other way around. No one in this debate is covered with glory.

Right now we're spending like crazy to keep our economy afloat. But the ultimate truth is that sooner or later we have to pay the bill for all the borrowing.

I see no way on earth that we can pay down such phenomenal debt without increasing everyone's taxes. I do not want it to be so, but we have 30 years of borrowing to deal with.

It's long past time to set aside the partisan bickering and deal with reality. While the R's and D's are fussing at each other, the country is going down the tubes.

The lack of discipline by both political parties in balancing the budget has been evident since Ronald Reagan. Both parties have supported tax cuts that increased deficits and both parties have supported spending increases that increased deficits. With respect to your analysis concerning projected deficits, I believe the data is sound but a little context is required. The recession dramatically reduced tax revenues thereby increasing budget deficits. Even if there had been no increase in spending, deficits would have ballooned by hundreds of billions of dollars. This is evidenced by the deteriorating financial condition on most states. I think the problem in America is that Americans have forgotten that the benefit of freedom carries with it the burden of freedom. If we have the right to decide, we have the responsibility to decide wisely. If we are unwilling to pay for the things we demand from our nation, from supporting entitlement programs to prosecuting wars, then we should pay taxes to fund these activities. if we are unwilling to accept the burden of paying higher taxes for these activities, then we should should terminate these activities and accept the burden of that decision. The benefits of freedom and the burdens come as a boxed set.

Anyone read the comments. Government is too large people. It does not matter if it was Bush then or Obama today. The beast that exists in Washigton D.C. is Jaba the Hut on steriods. Unless we elect people who are willing to take on the beauracratic establishment we will grow ourselves into a regulated dictatorship.

All of you are missing the real picture here. The problem is that all of our money is created as debt, with interest. About 25% of the budget is dedicated to paying interest on the debt. The Federal Reserve is a consortium of private banks and is run for their benefit, not ours. The US issues bonds and the Fed "buys" them by literally creating the money out of thin air. It's called "monetizing the debt". Also, all banks create money out of thin air when they make a loan to us, the government or business. This is why there's so much debt. It's the banker's plan to enslave us all in debt, and the crooks in our government(both Republican and Democrat) allow this, contrary to the Constitution which states "Congress shall have the power… to coin money and regulate the value thereof".

Until this fraudulent system is destroyed and honest money is allowed to circulate, all debt will continues to increase. Arguing over which President is the worse spender is like arguing over which rip cord to pull when you're not even wearing a parachute.

This is kind of like getting drunk one night, crashing the car, and then yelling at your wife when she goes out and buys a new car to get around in.

Bush administration policies wrecked the economy and squandered the surplus on a war of adventure and reckless tax cuts. In their waning days in office, Bush and his relevant cabinet members expressed support for the stimulus package (not that there was much option, short of welcoming great depression II). So it does not seem credible to suggest that the surge in deficit spending is an "Obama" problem. Both the problem and the capacity to deal with it were delivered to him immediately upon his inauguration.

Indeed, having wrecked the car and now sobered up, it would seem incumbent upon Bush zealots to describe exactly how we are to go forward without incurring large near-term deficits. Is it really as simple as to let the economy collapse? Seems unlikely to do much good for economic growth and thus, tax receipts, and thus, reduction in deficit spending.

Would be nice if either party would have to guts to stand up and admit that we need to address SS, Medicare, and the DOD with either large cuts or large tax increases or both. Of course, to say such things is political suicide. So the bottom line is that we have the government we deserve.

This idiocy from conservatives really amazes me. There was no surplus in 2000, whoever came up with these figures is really a moron. Second, who the fuck thinks that iraq and afghanistan are gonna cost less than 200 billion dollars. Combining the expenses of military equipment, soldier salaries, soldier benefits including death payments to famliies, rebuilding a fucking arab country cuz we had to jump in there. Where has this money come from? Foreign loans, and that is why we have such huge debts to other countries now. The GOP refuses to acknowledge this, and when it is time to start paying back some of this debt, and our ecnomy goes under again, who's gonna be there to blame obama? the republicans. The same republicans who, if they could, would go around lynching blacks, and shooting each other in the face. Another point is that WHO DOES THE WAR IN IRAQ BENEFIT? NOBODY, ESPECIALLY NO ONE IN THE US. Who does Obama's stimulus and health package benefit? US Americans, so if the GOP want to contradict themselves, bashing foreigners and muslims at every step, then why do you defend a war that includes billions in helping the muslims rebuild their countries. You're hypocrites, you're uneducated, you're inbreds, and your partisanship is going to ruin this country. Besides, with the current ideological stance that the GOP has, i really don't see this shite party lasting longer than a couple decades. We are becoming more liberal, like it or not, and there is no place for conservatives in a future, free world

After reading the article and the comments, I can see why congress is at a gridlock as to what to do next. Everyone seems to have his own spin on the "facts" and who is at fault. If one bends the figures to suit his beliefs, it's like reading the Bible….. all in the interpretation.

JR, read my above post. I can back it up with quotes from various Federal Reserve websites, like this one "Banks actually create money when they lend it."http://www.dallasfed.org/educate/everyday/ev9.htm…
It's not the Republicans or the Democrats doing this, it's the bankers. The R's and D's are just their bought and paid for puppets. Right now our economic system must grow debt exponentially or die. We need to return to a limited money supply, like when the dollar was defined as "Dollars or Units–each to be of the value of a Spanish milled dollar as the same is now current, and to contain three hundred and seventy-one grains and four sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or four hundred and sixteen grains of standard silver." in the Coinage Act of 1792. http://www.classbrain.com/artteenst/publish/artic…
They were very serious about punishing those who debase the currency like the Fed has done for 97 years. From the Act: "Sec. 19. And be it further enacted, That if any of the gold or silver coins which shall be struck or coined at the said mint shall be debased or made worse as to the proportion of fine gold or fine silver therein contained, or shall be of less weight or value than the same ought to be pursuant to the directions of this act, through the default or with the connivance of any of the officers or persons who shall be employed at the said mint, for the purpose of profit or gain, or otherwise with a fraudulent intent, and if any of the said officers or persons shall embezzle any of the metals which shall at any time be committed to their charge for the purpose of being coined, or any of the coins which shall be struck or coined at the said mint, every such officer or person who shall commit any or either of the said offences, shall be deemed guilty of felony, and shall suffer death."

Death to the Fed and fractional reserve banking. It's our only hope to escape perpetual debt slavery.

Interesting how the chart includes 2000 & 2001 in the projections. Bush's first budget would have been for the fall of 2001-2002. So it is dishonest to show him with any "surplus". Mr. Red Ink all the way.

And it is our fault [not me, I voted Gore], but the collective 'our' who voted for him at all. Way to go America.

[…] our kids and grandkids with debt, the U.S. government is and has been doing exactly that. The Heritage Foundation’s blog, for example, compares the deficit spending of President George W. Bush alongside […]

The chart distorts information in two ways. First it appears that FY 2001 (with a surplus) was a Bush budget, and then it appears that FY 2009 (with its huge deficit) is an Obama budget. Both are incorrect, since the fiscal year actually begins in October of the preceding year.

[…] as well as grandkids with debt, a U.S. supervision is as well as has been you do just that. The Heritage Foundation’s blog, for example, compares a necessity spending of President George W. Bush to one side […]

What did you expect. Obama has to clean up Former President Bush's mess in Iraq. Of course the deficit will be high with 400 billion going to the war every year. Obama started with the wars and the economy in shambles (also Bushes doing). I am just glad to see that Obama will be able to bring us out of this Bush Chaos will only having to spend the amount of money he is going to have to spend.

[…] country great. You want to know what the problem is in the U.S.? Let's start with the fact that EVERY Bone Headed idea that Bush came up with, from Federal Spending in Education, Social Programs, Bank Bailouts, Wars and everything else, has […]

It does not take 50 dollars to fix a 20 dollar problem.Get your head out of the clouds and stop blaming ''the last guy''.It's simple math.There is 3 times the spending going on and more to come.WAKE UP!!

[…] spend during tough economic times, which is extremely hypocritical considering Obama has already quadrupled the deficit. “When times are tough, you tighten your belts,” the president said. “You […]

This article, and this graph, is totally dishonest. It makes it seem that Obama is responsible for the 2009 deficit. Anyone who knows anything at all about the budget process knows that the 2009 budget 1. was written and enacted before Obama took office 2. ballooned because of budget offsets and commitments made before he took office 3. includes almost a trillion dollars needed to bail out the financial sector to prevent a total collapse of the banking system, which was caused by a lack of oversight and regulation by the Republican Congress and Bush's White House, and a stimulus package necessary to save an economy ruined by the previous administration. Also, it's funny that nowhere to be seen is the previous budget… No one here seems to be giving Clinton any praise for balancing the budget and creating a surplus…

i.e, "Five years later, during a 2004 Congressional hearing on improvement to regulatory structures for Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae, Democrat congressmen poo-poo a regulator from the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight…" Those infamous "hearings" should still be on YouTube for all to see.

The naked hypocrisy of Barney Frank, Maxine Waters & the CBC (who just wanted to provide cover for the corrupt Franklin Raines) are on clear display.

Sorry (but not surprised) that the MSM didn't pursue this story then. They just had to get their (unvetted & untested) boy into the WH. Now we are all paying the price. Oh November, come quickly!

[…] country great. You want to know what the problem is in the U.S.? Let's start with the fact that EVERY Bone Headed idea that Bush came up with, from Federal Spending in Education, Social Programs, Bank Bailouts, Wars and everything else, has […]

This leaves out one very important part. The dollar tanked in Bush's 8 years. A dollar today is not equal to what a dollar was.

Gold is real money. An ounce of gold will buy as much today as an ounce of gold would buy 100 years ago.

An ounce of gold is almost $1100 today.

In 2000, it was under $300 an ounce.

The currency lost 70% of its value.

Only the lousy real estate market has kept inflation out of the stratosphere.

At its inception, the Euro was worth less than a $1. Until the recent troubles in Greece which caused the Euro to fall, the exchange rate was about 3 dollars for 2 Euros. Similar numbers in comparison to Canadian dollar too!!!!

Most inflation statistics do not include the full burden of gasoline and food prices.

The house is on fire. Bush is the arsonist and Obama is a lousy fireman.

THIS IS NOT CORRECT!!! THIS IS BUSH PROJECTIONS FROM HIS FLAWED BUDGET!!! YOU HAVE ACTUAL UNDER BUSH BUDGET PROJECTIONS>> THIS IS WRONG!! BUSH DEPT LEFT US NOT ON HIS BUDGET IS ABOUT 11 Trillion.. PLEASE REFLECT THIS IF YOU WANT TO COMPARE SPENDING.. THIS IS FALSE PROPAGANDA FOR THE MINDLESS

Ugg im Livid,, after my conservative friends keep pointing this site and this graph to me i decide to do some research after my 1st comment a few minutes ago..

1st off.. You have Bush Deficits down as actually when they are just budget projections.. If one knows anything about budgets they should know the difference between actual and projections.. So that is very misleading and false.

2nd.. This graph has Obama responsible for 09 budget in which was written buy Bush.

What sense does comparing Projected deficits in a budget when we have 12.4 trillion dollars of dept.. Apparently Bush budget was off by atleast 6 trillion!!! And only the time will tell how accurate Obamas budget is.. But i have to say, if you actually look at the 2010 budget.. its def seems there is alot more transparency in it then the last few years..

Please Heritage, dont assume that all of use are going to chew this red meat that you put out there. Please be more accurate.

[…] were ousted from power in part because of their deficit spending. While those deficits were nowhere near the current Democrat spending, it was unsustainable. Now the chairman of the party seems to be running the party like Republicans […]

You know I sit here and read some of the stuff that people say omg the stimulus bill is going to make our grandchildren pay lol omg 700 billion is just aweful I mean what the f##k you expect for just being in the white house for a little more than a year people are ignorant in thinking well screw him he hasnt done anything which most of you cant stand to see a black man as our leader…Lol you guys are really stupid do you know what the def. is? 12 trillion so a lets say a trillion still isnt anywhere close for the cowboy that was in the office. Its like saying I start at a job and because of people that worked for the last admin everyone that comes in bitches about this and that and you redneck ment. makes me pretty sick. Also most americans are sheep that are brainwashed into what ever they want you to hear. Haha I really think that he will do a good job give him time its like asking him to cook a steak thats frozen in 5 minutes not going to happen and people that sit there and say told you so are really either uneducated or plain dumb. Guys im sorry but america is goin into defficit because of bush if you really really believe that he didnt than you are sheep that is not led but rather willing to be led by the hand just as a child goes to school with his/her child makes me sick get used to it because i think he will be elected again omg a black man ahhhhhhhh what a bunch of morons. Oh and the hitler idea love it you guys really think he is the anti-christ lol has obama even talked about going in taking everything you own, guns etc. people want health care but are outraged about how much it cost you guys are really out there but anyway get used to it he is everyone in this country president so like i said get used to it even you people that say "well I didnt vote for him" yah you all to.

THE ONLY WAY TO STOP THE INSANITY THAT IS COMING OUT OF WASHINGTON DC, IS FOR OUR MILITARY TO INTERVENE ON BEHALF OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. THE PRESENT ADMINISTRATION FROM THE PRESIDENT ON DOWN TO THE SUPREME COURT, WHICH INCLUDES THE CONGRESS NEEDS TO BE ARRESTED AND PROSECUTED FOR TREASON AGAINST THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES AND OUR GOVERNING CONSTITUTION! THIS ALSO INCLUDES PREVIOUS PRESIDENTS GEORGE BUSH SR., BILL CLINTON. GEORGE BUSH JR AND THEIR SPOUSES. THE PEOPLE THEN NEED TO FIND AND ELECT LAW ABIDING DECENT AND GOD FEARING CHRISTIANS TO GOVERN THIS GREAT COUNTRY.THEN AND ONLY THEN CAN WE SAY WITH COMPLETE HONESTY, THE U.S.A. HAS A GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE.AND FOR THE PEOPLE!

This Forum is just another way to pacify the people, just as you would a new born baby crying for attention, you give it a bottle to suck on to keep it quiet. It never accomplishes anything but satisfies the individual for a while, until the next feeding of corruption and propaganda to violate the mind into submission to a Orwellian totalitarianism society. Where everyone except Big Brother (the government) become the victims of evil and inhuman treatment.

I live and work at the level where I see every day how government Entitlements are destroying this country. People have the best cars, cell phones assisted government housing clothing etc. and have welfare cards food stamps medicaid cards oh and get free medical when ever they walk into a hospital. There ages average are between 17 to 49 and unemployed. If you can get a doctor to declare you an alcoholic then you can get social security. So there is little to no incentive to work for a living in this once great country. Until this changes our country is doomed! Thank the present administration for contributing more to the destruction of the greatest country in the world.

[…] Conservatives have been telling the public this was an “Obama Deficit” and use graphics and charts that label this last Bush budget as Obama’s. This is nothing more than a lie, of course repeated […]

Let's see………Bush effectively doubled the national debt in eight(8) years; your numbers show an increase, in round numbers from the 2009 debt of $15 trillion to $25 trillion in ten(10) years. Obama increases debt by 67% in ten(10) years. Your point is well taken, Obama is slowing the accumulation of debt. Your dissembling would be comical in a well-informed society, but our media fails miserably and your propaganda works. I admire many conservative, libertarian principles, agree with many. The Republican party is simply corporatist, with a little authoritarianism thrown in. Liberalism is about maximizing freedom, which they do – for corporations.

Your organization, like many on the right, suffers from the "Cheney Syndrome". Liz Cheney will do everything possible to rid her father and his administration of the blame – and the guilt – for our being attacked on 9/11. Many of your prinicples – deregulation, "starving the beast" through deficit spending, huge military buildups, the "John Galtification" of our economy and political discourse – were successfully implemented and are directly responsible for our current economic situation. Seems we have to go through this cycle every so often – society is rebuilt from the previous destruction of your ideology, prosperity is increased for many, social mobility increases……meanwhile you undertake the next cycle of transferring much of that wealth to the top. Please, for the good of the country, take a sabbatical, go Galt on us. At least let us rebuild before you take it down again.

[…] Conservatives have been telling the public this was an “Obama Deficit” and use graphics and charts that label this last Bush budget as Obama’s. This is nothing more than a lie, of course repeated […]

george w bush increased federal spending by 104% compared to clinton's increase of 11%. bush and his administration should be prosecuted for war crimes. it has cost the american people dearly and the money spent on war would have completely paid for a federal health care program for everyone in america.

Trying to understand the facts behind the surplus that was in place when Bush started. Do the tables above understate the impact of Bush given the net swing from surplus to deficit? For instance, wouldn't going from a project surplus of $1 trillion to a net deficit of $1 trillion imply impact of the administration was a negative $2 trillion? Not an economist, but the above just does not seem to make sense from a "average joe" point of view. I know that 2000 started with a great economy and massive surplus and 2009 started with a crap economy and a deficit. The recession is behind at least some portion of this, but it sures seems that Bush had to have more of an impact than the graphic above shows.

Both Presidents were/are self serving, politicians, our congress has been bound up in whoredom and we are all suffering. Not to mention the future generations. What happened to our National Pride. We need a government that realizes that charity begins at home, displays good solid business practices and quits spending when they are broke. Quit giving when you don't have it to give. even God only ask for 10%. Debt=Slavery, Taxes=Slavery.

What does your house hold do when they are broke? Quit spending ! Our contry is so illiterate it is frightening, violence is increasing, Years ago we were taught that good economics was a balance between agriculture and industry. (to simple to be true) Where does that leave us.? I believe that Americans are capable and we can fight back and come back. Make Europe defend themselves, Make the UN require the same amount of money from each developed nation or get out of it. Quit allowing our gov't to kill small farmers, and industry. Quit being muscled and compromising with countries who grossly violate their own people.

Quit giving advantages to countries like China Why send them money through the stimulous package and allow them to charge us intrest on money they loaned us to give to them.(That is what we have allowed those in gov't to get away with.) Stop our insane gov't now! Give the states their proper rights. Return to our constitution.

[…] that would upend 1/6 of the US economy was going to be heaped on them…in addition to budget deficits that put Bush’s to shame that the tea party movement really gelled. And while Republicans should be ashamed of themselves […]

Obama already took the national debt from 10.6 trillion when he first took office to over 12.4 trillion today… and the numbers are climbing..He has a 3.8 trillion dollar spending spree planned for this year.. He drove the debt up 1.8 triillion dollars with NOTHING to show for it but the bill..

Hey America! Wassup? Tired of being stabbed in the ole back?! While you are hard at work and raising your families, you put your TRUST in your government, and your government, like any other CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE, has STOLEN YOUR MONEY! Not part of it, ALL OF IT and hey, YOUR KID'S MONEY TOO! And they CONTINUE TO DO IT! Demorats have been GIVING YOUR MONEY AWAY(after helping themselves to it FIRST!) to immigrants and ILLEGALS to BUY VOTES…to HECK WITH AMERICANS! Expect the Muslim-in-Chief to 1)include AMNESTY in Obamacare 2) pass Cap and Trade, even though global warming is a HOAX and JUNK SCIENCE…does anyone TRUST scientists anymore? Not me! And this bill will strangle our entire ECONOMY! 3) look for more ways to DISTRIBUTE YOUR "WHATEVER YOU HAVE LEFT". Hey, you can thank HOLLYWOOD for this too! Most of them are proud COMMIES! When all their money is gone(and it will be!) , we shall see how proud they are then. From the HIGHS of JOHN WAYNE AND JIMMY STEWART to the LOWS OF SEAN PENN AND BEN AFFLECK. No wonder we are sinking to new lows!

Do you even know the difference between "debt" and "deficit"? Since the 60's, we've seen our federal debt increase under both Republican and Democratic administrations. In the same time period, our budget deficit flipped once (ie, there was a surplus or a net positive difference in revenues and expenditures) in FY 2000 and was projected to be a $1 trillion surplus by this year. Obviously, we all know what actually happened from there.

For the record, almost half of the last two FY budgets under Bush and Obama went to DOD spending. You people act as if the deficit wouldn't exist if McCain had won! Get real.

We all spend — we all take loan and have debt. Some take a mortgage to house their families and others to take vacations and buy fancy cars. Same with government spending. Obama inherited a deep recession that could have become a depression; plus the banking system was about to fail the way it did in 1929. Everyone out their knows that if your choice is between deficit spending or depression, or disappearance of banking system, you deficit spend. You're just trying to pin Obama with the problems W and the republicans created. It's the same problem republicans always create — they love spending more than anyone and they love tax cuts too — but they never pay for any of it. It's part of an intentional policy to starve the beast – the government — now suddenly you care? You're too late and you ability to do simple arithmetic isn't going to change anything. Beginning with Reagan, every democratic president reduced the national debt by the time they left office — and every republican increased it dramatically. Obama is spending cause the has little choice thanks to cumulative mess the republicans left the nation

Since the Obama administration, and Nancy Pelosi were so consumed with using the CBO's numbers for the health care 'smoke and mirrors' fairy tale projections, which were so succinctly disproved by Paul Ryan as using such budget gimmickry as 'double counting', I find it glaring that they will not use the same CBO's numbers as shown in the graph, but instead have their own "rosier" projections. These numbers don't include the $107 trillion in unfunded liabilities (in Social Security and Medicare), nor the current deficit of almost $13 trillion, nor the aforementioned fuzzy math which the CBO used to wit: if you take $523 billion out of Medicare to create another entitlement program (Obamacare) then you can't say you are decreasing the deficit by the same amount.

[…] was bigger than 2007. This projection was BEFORE the healthcare bill deficit spending was signed. Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures | The Foundry: Conservative Policy News. __________________ Vote for a Regime Change. The First Amendment does not authorize the fourth […]

[…] of the 'Stimulus' Plans: Bush vs. Obama President Bush expanded the federal budget by a historic $700 billion through 2008. President Obama would add another $1 trillion. Both president's singed into law very […]

On September 10 2001 Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced an investigation into a missing $2.3 Trillion from the Pentagon totally unaccounted for.

Conveniently , 9/11 occurred and of course the investigation was halted. So here we are a decade later and the accountability has not been focused on since that day. The country is lost to the Military Industrial Complex and will be blamed on the have nots.

Greatest country in the world…? You must not get out much. Or just, at all. The previous president doubled the national debt. Period. Read: Doubled. And no one said anything. And some even deny it completely. You let Big Business and their interests run your country with lies, and do nothing but sit back and look for someone to blame. Way to go, losers.

[…] George W. Bush was a major disappointment as well. Both Obama and his predecessor are/were guilty of expanding government and dramatically increasing spending. For this alone, I feel that both Barack Obama and George W. […]

Well I've read Obama's projected spending is triple what Bush spent in four years. Obama's plan is to make it look like were coming out of the hole because the money he's throwing at the problems now will resurface by the time his seconded election roles around. In all he will get another term. I said he would double if not triple Bush's debt. Mark my words I've not been wrong yet when it comes to him. PS I've also heard from experts not personally but on the news that this health bill will launch us into a depression. Obama was advised to the same note and acted as if he did not hear it. Why because he does not care. As for those who only follow him because he is black he only 6.25% black he legally doesn't even qualify as black. He is legally America Arabic.

I have trouble w/these deficit numbers for bush and I wonder if any libs wanna respond. I know clinton was great cause everyone was doing well (suppossedly) as we had y2k and his veep invented the internet. So, while he road the wave he dessimated the military and didn't do much about WTC1 and the other bombings during his time and didn't do anything when he found out they weren't trying to land the planes…and I always wonder, if slick willie was so great how come algore couldn't ride the coattails and got beat by the dope bush? Now, bush had the afghan war and creating homeland security…doesn't that count towards a deficit that he can't be blamed for totally or did he mishandle/misappropriate the $ (of course his veep that piece of dung w/his halliburton hurricane machine left our kids w/out proper defense in many tanks)…I don't think so. And I love the folks who say he signed the mtg bailout…um, er, I didn't see the messiah talking vs. that did you? I know bush was bad who could have ever thought the messiah would b/worse in ONLY 1 YEAR!

One of the libs says the republicans "love spending more than anyone and they love tax cuts too — but they never pay for any of it"…you would think that they can never get elected…but they do get elected and are very close to doing very well in november (the messiah has already gone 0 for 3 in gov's in nj/va and scott brown in taxachoosetts)…so, while I know the repubs suck too…it seems that most think that the libs and this messiah prez suck more…can that be true?

Here is an excverpt from a report to the Ways and Means Committee that shows what a masterful job of "selective use" that these thieves use when using CBO data for their claims. With a thresh hold of $66,000 for a family of four I'm afraid there are going to be alot of people on both sides of the spectrum paying a whole lot more to fund this beast than they thought on the day it passed.According to a November 20, 2009 analysis by the Congressional Budget Office and Joint

Committee on Taxation, nearly half (46%) of the IMT collected by the IRS would be paid by

households earning less than 300% of the Federal Poverty Line ($66,150 for a family of

four) – violating the President’s pledge not to raise taxes on families earning less than $250,000

When was this country the most fiscally responsible in the last 40 years? From 1995 to 2006. Who controlled congress during those 12 years? The conservatives, of course. Who controls spending in our country. The congress does. Isn't it amazing that spending got under control and the deficits were reduced during the 12 years the Republicans controlled congress? But they explode when the Democrats lead by Nancy Pelosi take control. Everyone always blames the Presidents for the deficits when we all know that the congress controls the purse strings. If you don't like the extreme excess of government spending vote out the people who are spending us to death the Democrats in congress.

Someone give me an example – just one – where government borrowing and spending has created long term prosperity. Read history, this type of irresponsible behavior (yes, for both D's and R's) only leads to inflation, unemployment, and eventually an economic reckoning.

So – please with facts – someone give me an actual historical example. And as stated many times here, the Great Depression doesn't count.

With regard to the Bush administrations contribution to the federal deficit I would like to know what the figures might look like had it not been for 9-11.

I would also like to know if others feel as I do, that Obama's goal is to create a nation of dependent voters; those that can be counted to keep the liberal establishment in power – i.e.; failure to do so would result in the loss of their monthly government reward.

Rocky, you are delusional. Obama has been a master at budget tricks. Excluding the 350 billion doctor fix from the health care bill so it would be "deficit neutral". What a joke. Double counting the savings from Medicare cuts…WTF??? 10 years of taxes and 6 years of benefits in the first 10 years of the bill. Giving the CBO the most bogus set of assumptions, which by law they have to adhere to, to cook the health care books. Boy is THAT above board accounting!

Anyone with a brain and a calculator can see this train wreck coming. You CANNOT cover 30 million more people with an organization modeled on the Post Office without HUGE budget deficits. Not to mention doctors leaving their practices in droves. Rationing anyone?

Its funny. Someone actually pointed out that the biggest part of spending by the federal government is on defense and that if we cut out the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, then we'll help reduce the debt. Sorry, but defense is NOT the biggest spender. Its actually number three on the list. Medicare/Medicaid top the list followed closely by Social Security. The problem with the Federal government is that instead of actually spending money on things the country needs, its simply giving it away to people who have no desire to actually work to pay their own health care.

This has become a entitlement based society in which we live. Everyone believes that instead of actually working for a living, that the government exists solely to take care of them. Why work when we can get everything for free? All we have to do is be poor and lazy and rely of the hard workers who actually do the right thing and make money and pay their taxes.

JFK once said "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." That was less than 50 years ago that he said that. SInce then, alot of people in this country have reversed it. They don't don't ask what they can do for their country, but what can the country do for me. JFK wound be sick if he sawy what has happened in the USA since he died. He must be turning over in his grave.

WWII did end the depression because everyone who was out of work was either in the military or making war materials. All the spending in the 1930's did not bring the unemployment below 10% – For those who constantly complain about all the money spent on the military….read the Constitution! The Constitution specifies that the Federal Government's job is to provide for the common defense. It says nothing about the Federal Government providing Health Care or any other social program!

[…] of the American public has opened the door to a blurring of party lines: Republicans spend like Democrats, smother civil liberties in the name of security, mortgage America to China, attempt to impose […]

I agree with the fact this whole mess started back in the Clinton administration with the housing being made easier for people who could not afford a mortgage. Another fact is the fuzzy math used to say they had a balanced budget, it never was.

As for an illegal war, the Vietnam Conflict is and was in that category. Congress never declared war on Vietnam. We lost 58,000 men and women in this conflict. We should have never been there in the first place.

After the attack on NYC I agree we needed to find and condemn the leaders of this massacre. After opening the gates and allowing many of these people into this land for assylum, we now have sleeper cells across this land waiting to strike again.

Obama and his regime will pay in the elections in the next few years. I do believe many Americans are angry and feel they were lied to by this man.

We all agree to disagree, that is one of our fundamental rights granted to us by the Constitution's Bill of Rights.

I bet 90% of the Lie-beral DemoChaotics can't even read the graph above. How could they when they can't add or subtract numbers bigger than 99? The graph probably looks like a bunch of red free popsicle to them.

For the geniuses out there who honestly believe we can "spend" our way out of a recession/depression, try that at home for me. If I have $100 in the bank, under your economics plan, I should go out and purchase a house and a car. That will somehow add money to my account and reduce my financial liability? Based on some of the Obama supporter comments, we should definitely start taxing drugs!

[…] of its crushing deficits and level of debt, more than one American has asked, in light of our huge projected budget deficits, whether the U.S. government could be in that position someday. Paul Krugman says that the […]

A great many people involved in the polarization of American brothers and sisters(citizens) don’t see past their own noses, can’t see the forest for the trees, or whatever euphemism will work to express that there actually IS a bigger picture, and we’re not seeing it. Warren Buffet has stated the most practical piece of advice I’ve heard by any politician, pundit, or poet so far. He explained in a TV interview that if we give him more money he’s not going to spend it. He has everything he needs or wants. He wants to know about all the talk about jobs, jobs, jobs. Jobs he says do not create orders for goods. Get money into the hands of people who will spend it. This creates orders, creating jobs.Let the process work. We all sat by for eight years and calmly watched W and his crew sell us right down the waste pipe. NAFTA didn’t help either, but at least Big Bill left us with some change in the piggy bank. So, the cost of tax breaks, government insurance programs, etc. might be better viewed in the light of their full swing rather than a knee jerk reaction to the backswing only.

First off, i’d like to post a disclaimer that i am not of either party, and i despise gov’t spending. But, considering the ridiculous and unnecessary Bush wars, and the economic meltdown, shouldn’t Obama be given a small break when it comes to spending? This is a national emergency, and the bailouts, et al, might have just staved off a complete collapse of the economy. Another emergency, we spent twice this (as % of GDP, which is the only number that really matters) during WWII–should we not have spent this to save Europe from Hitler’s Fascism? Following were two of the most productive decades in U.S. history (all while taxes were very high).

With regard to the “bailout” and TARP spending, Bush started this (i don’t necessarily blame him–these are emergency times) and stated he’d have to continue the bailouts–he was simply “saved by the bell”.
Also, most of that TARP money has been paid back, WITH interest (the taxpayers profited from it), and even the stronger institutions (Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan) have said they might not have withstood a compelte collapse of the other institutions around them (eg: bailing out AIG and others saved the strong ones as well, preventing utter collapse).

No, Bush’s #’s above certainly do NOT cover all of the war spending. It does not cover “appropriations spending” which is, by definition, “off the books”. Can you prove it does include those #’s? I’ve tried to read some of your sources, and they’re either a broken link (the pdf) or you’re simply citing you own website!? Or you’re citing the right-wing Washington Post as your other “source”?? C’mon. I expect more.

Obama is gonna bankrupt this nation. BS. I have been hearing that about presidents since I was a little kid and I am 60 now. Obama is spending money on the people of this country who need it. Republicans only want to help the rich get richer as we can tell by the 44 republicans who voted against banking regulations recently. I am quite sure that helping the needy is what a person with a good heart does. But then again,

I dont care anything about having a million dollars in the bank when I die!!!!

"•President Bush began a string of expensive finan­cial bailouts. President Obama is accelerating that course."

This is an outright lie. TARP was under Bush. The Fed's out-of-control fountain of hundreds of billions was mostly under Bush. Only the auto bailout, a tiny fraction of Bush's Wall Street Bailout, was under Obama.

As Ben from Seattle says, it appears to be a broken link when you click "Obama is accelerating that course" above….While it takes you to a source with the same phrase (quoted above), the footnote attached goes nowhere. You just click footnote #4 and it takes you to the bottom of the page. No Source. Just unsourced lies. Is this some kind of a joke?

Obama "accelerated the bailouts" Please. If anything he put the brakes on the bailouts. You had trillions handed out or guaranteed under Bush. You had nothing of the sort under Obama. Like I said, the closest thing was the Auto program, and that was something you can make an argument for in terms of saving a few million jobs in the middle of the worst recession since we figured this stuff out with the Glass-Steagall Act in 1933. The Auto Bailout amount was roughly 50 billion, a tiny fraction of Bush/Bernanke’s unrestrained drunken trillions. You can't find anything significant spent in TARP funds outside of the auto program. Get your dates straight. Any way you count it, 95% of the actual bailouts occurred under Bush.

Tax receipts fell off a cliff due to this monumental recession, which was caused by blind adherence to Laissez-Faire free market purism. That doubled the deficit right there, increasing it hundreds of billions. If you don’t understand “derivative deregulation” then don’t bother trying to be an expert on the economy. I suppose the whole recession is Obama's fault. Here is a basic point – cutting taxes raises the deficit, to the tune of an additional 100 billion this year, to the tune of trillions of red ink under Bush, and more under Bush I and Reagan. You can't favor tax cutting and favor deficit-cutting. The two are opposite. The only way you can take a deficit, cut tax, and fix the deficit, is to cut spending much more. So just come out and say you want to abandon the promise to our seniors and not pay Social Security Benefits, and cut all spending for senior's Medicare; otherwise you tell me: how are you going to cut taxes and cut the deficit. This sounds like a retry of the discredited Laffer curve that Nobel Prize winner James Tobin famously proved to be relevant only in the theoretical sense.

You would think Conservatives would favor wholesale slashing of government like Obama's student loan reform and Medicare Advantage reform, the first saving 8 billion per year, the second saving more like 50 billion per year. You don’t like the governmnent slashing spending, saving money? Tens of millions of middle-class Americans who paid taxes under Bush paid no tax at tax time in 2009, tens of millions owed no income tax for the whole year, and everyone who works got a tax cut. Just look at your effective tax rate if you are a normal person like me who makes less than 100K per year. With deductions I barely pay 8%, including payroll tax. I’m having the best year financially of my life.

Don’t ever put people who’s stated goal is to destroy government in charge of government. And if you do, don’t expect anything other than unmitigated disaster. Exhibit A: The Bush Administration.

I haven't read any of the above so others may have made the same point but the public needs to be aware that the figures presented as the federal deficit have year after year been in effect a great big lie. That is to say a lie by misdirection. Not that the real data haven't been avaiilable, but we have been misdirected to the wrong set of numbers. i.e. debt owed to the public. This number serves only what treasury needs to issue as marketable debt. But the real deficit is also funded by borrowing from Trust fund surpluses, by definition not part of the "public"! Media have not helped make this clear to the citizenry. For shame. The amount owed to the trust fund, especially Social Security is in the trillions, and also must include the interest the accumulated surplus would have earned. It's a double edged sword:. Not only does Treasury no longer have the SSI cookie jato to fund the next dollar spent, but it must borrow or tax to pay the next SSI claim. Enough for now. s/gillog, a 13 year OMB economist for credit policy analysis retired 1982.

This chart does not include Bush's off-budget items that Heritage claims it does. From 01 through 08 the debt went up 4.2 tril not 2.5. And the CBO re-scored the 09 buget deflict of Bush the week before Obama took office to a projected 1.2 tril and it came in at 1.4. That gives Obama about 200 bil of the 1.9 (not 2.6) tril the debt grew from 08 to 09 giving Bush a total of 5.9 tril from 9/30/01 (5.807 tril) to 9/30/09 (11.909 tril, .200 tril of that goes to Obama). The debt hit 6 trill about 40 days into Bush's first budget and 12 tril 48 days after Bush's last budget. Heritage likes to use fuzzy math but for most of us 12-6=6. Also current 10yr projections are only 4 tril total if Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire. These projections are droping as TARP might actually turn a profit from Obama's restructure of it and GDP growth is coming in stronger than expected due to stimulus. It also assumes spending on the wars stay at current levels and it will not. Bottom line we might be back in surplus territory by the end of the decade if we can keep Republicans out of Washington. Democratic administrations have fixed economic messes left by Republican administrations in the 30's, 60's, 90's, and they will again this decade if given a chance. The Democrats are the real kings of capitalism.

How do you figure that Obama and Bush share 2009? As I remember, the last year for which there was a full budget procedure was 2008. In 2009, there were multiple continuing resolutions in the first quarter of 2009, and then Obama increased the FY spending by about $1 trillion, falsely claiming that he was putting stuff on budget that President Bush had left off-budget. Add to that his half of the TARP (Bush only authorized the first half) and you have a deficit of $1.3 trillion of which President Obama should get virtually total credit.

So many people get debt and deficit confused. I think that is an issue here, in some of the statements I have read. Debt is the accumulated debt, deficit is related to the existing budget for the fiscal year. I hope this helps.

I love the fact that this chart puts 09 in the Obama category, when the budget for 09 is Bush. Obama didn't get into office until Jan. 09' and that is when you start seeing the turn around in direction toward being in the black. Bush is a steady decline, Obama is a steady incline.

Bush sharing with Obama the budget ending 9/30/09 is rediculous for the following reasons:

1. The income tax receipts for the fy budget ending 9/30/09 was based on the income generated in 2008.

2. Obama did not take office until 1/20/09 when the Bush team had been in place for 112 days. This left Obama 253 days to appoint and get congressional approval for his team, determine policies and legislation, then pass legislation that will effect the economy. There is usually a lag time of at least six months to two years before legislation will have a meaningful effect on the economy.

3. The largest bill passed by the Obama Adm. before 9/30/09 was the $700 billion Stimulus plan. Less than $200 billion of the plan was spent before 9/30/09.

4. Even if you insist on Obama sharing the budget ending 9/30/09, you need to consider the CBO an independent organization (unlike The Heritage Foundation which is linked to the Republican Party) estimated the deficit ending 9/30/09 would be $1.2 trillion. It ended at $1.4 less than 20% increase.

5. This is the first time I have seen an effort by the outgoing President to push his last budget forward to the incoming Presidents budget.

[…] coal mines, and oil drilling has led to a few problems lately. Likewise we’ll put aside big-time deficit spending by George W. Bush and his GOP Congresses. Republicans now say they were wrong, they have reformed […]

YOU LEFT OUT AN IMPORTANT ELEMENT IN YOUR ARTICLE. A DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY IN CONGRESS TOOK EFFECT IN 2006. THIS MAJORITY COULD PASS INCREASED SPENDING WHICH THEY DID. A DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY IN CONGRESS AND NOW THE PRESIDENCY HAS RUINED THE ECONOMIC STANDING OF THE U.S.A..

SO – – – If we were to just take the part of the debt that Obama added ($4.9 Trillion) and we were to spend $100 every second of every day to pay it off, we could have his tab paid off in roughly 1,553.78 years. You do the math – I did. Sheeeesh!!!

I don't really support any parties and listening to the hateful rhetoric and reading the anger in the forums, is like listening to the crew of the Titanic argue over the size of the iceberg we just hit. You see, it really doesn't matter. Empires rise and fall. This country and even our whole global society, probably won't make it. We just haven't evolved enough as a social species to settle on a political structure. Insects and hive mentality work because they have no concept of corruption. We will war amongst ourselves until we all perish. Divided we fall.

Both sides have failings, major failings, in that they, we, treat each other as sides to compete against, and this forum no different . . . those who apologize, and or attack the other just to cement their side of the wall. Just work together, stop your top down political divide and take back the future, not just pi$$ in the pool over and over AGAIN. It's sadly a chorus, 4 years and loop, just change sides but hey, hold onto the rhetoric. And if you can run the country better, by all means get elected by popular vote.

Well actions speaker louder than words. Regardless of how much you love/hate Obama or Bush. When you speak on taking back your rights as a citizen, think of that when you vote for rights to be taken away from gay being married. When you say look at the chart. One could go back and forth about numbers that the world may never know. We are on a need to know basis and we don't need to know that the world is corrupt with prejudice, racist, and discriminating people who will try their very best to say or do anything to misguide and misdirect those who are lost. To allow them to be found in the ignorance they've inherited from their friends, families, or whoever. Obama is a black man with a plan and is moving forward with it. Seeing signs with him painted as a hitler person is only used to redirect the attention of "again" those who are LOST. Find yourself, find the truth and move forward *(positively)

I'm not a Bush supporter but I am definitely disturbed by how Americans seem to be blinded to the way the nation is going. Stop the blame game. Americans have a huge problem. If you are not careful, your nation will be bankrupt and like a third world country. The middle class will disappear and a certain elite group will control the government. If you think this is a joke, take a trip overseas and take a look at how this has played out in other countries. American has people that are hurting physically, emotionally and financially. The blame game will not get them out of trouble. This whole economic collapse started with people that are spending beyond their means. Now your government is doing the same thing and you think that they are doing the right thing??????? If Americans don't learn from their past mistakes, they are doomed to repeat them. Wake up, Americans you are in denial.

The great depression which ran from 33 to 41 became so severe because Hoover took a laissez-faire attitude toward the collapsing financial system and basically did nothing. In 1933 the unemployment rate was 25% in the US, the stock market during the depression lost approx 90% of it's wealth. FDR saved America through the new deal, creating infrastructure, etc… For those who think WWII is what saved the nation, the US did not officially enter the war until Dec. 8, 1941. The only other exposure prior was the lend lease act signed by FDR in March of 1940 which allowed us to ship weapons to GB. America stayed out of the war until then because we were too broke to enter it. History shows us what will happen if we do nothing. Obama/Bernanke have simply copied the new deal. I agree that spending American tax dollars to bail out the financial companies that created part of this is angering but if you think it was unnecessary take a moment and read a history book to see what would happen going the republican way.

"President Bush became the first President to spend 3 percent of GDP on federal antipoverty programs. President Obama has already in­creased this spending by 20 percent."

This is a misleading and dishonest use of statistics. In increase in a type of spending (as a percentage of itself) is an entirely different statistic from the percentage the same type of spending comprises of a different figure, the GDP.

How about taking a look at the real costs of the war in Iraq (which Bush NEVER accounted for), a totally needless war against a country that had never attacked us and had, at that time, no connection to 9/11 and a war neo-conservatives fraudulently trumped up with selective and even false "evidence," as a percentage of GDP? Then try to make the case again for the moral outrage over 3.75% (Bush's 3% increased by 20%) used to assist those harmed by conservatives' handling of the economy

Today, in what appears to be a shocking turn of events, President Obama announced that he is committed to cutting the deficit in half by 2013 …something which strikes me as merely being just another meaningless politically convenient boiler plate.

My …my …my! One would think that miracles never cease.

The timing of this announcement …as well as its context smacks suspiciously as an almost exact identical replica of an announcement to cut the deficit in half …one which was made by former President Bush.

That announcement never materialized. However, it did serve to placate a growing America angst and a dwindling presidential approval rating at a time when the price of oil and monetary policies were being rocked by global, geo-political forces too large for Washington’s political will to address, grapple and tackle.

It seems though today, however …that Mr. Obama's remarks have been made to be tempered by a unified set of forces whose collective will is beyond the reaches of his office’ and the domain of a sovereign America.

For you see, when the interests of America’s creditors speak …Washington now has to listen.

For you see, their interests are those which fuel America’s debt building policies …those of the last two administrations.

For you see, when these extra-ordinary sets of powers turn on you to leverage a powerfully unified …global mantra …this is the sort of external power whose will tends to speak with a bit more persuasion than those of the American electorate.

I know that this is a contradiction in terms of the paradox of political service, but bullshit walks and money walks.

And this is the sort of money …howbeit foreign …which is causing Mr. Obama to speak a new narrative.

The power of its source is a persuasion which has been clearly unleashed.

It is the first of a truly global nature …and the first to openly impact the president in a wake up call …one to which he is being made to listen.

As a captive audience, Obama has no choice in the matter. The world owns US.

So, by the same sort of pressures issued from abroad …their forces are and have intended to strongly convey by a consensus of those among Mr Obama's peers at the G-20 summit …austerity is now in vogue.

Spending is out.

In view of his seemingly will and ability to turn on a dime, this abrupt about face’s turn about projects a blatant paradox which seems a bit more that being merely two-faced though.

And …in light of who Mr. Obama should have …would have …and could have …or, ought to have doing …the paradox of service seems to have fallen short of what could be seen as “A SERVICE TO …” the American people ….with every ounce of his fiber and strength.

Pity is this paradox!

Yet, for all he and his parties agenda's costs …Mr. Obama's political will is now finally being made to concede and make open verbal concessions which appear to serve and placate international persuasions instead.

Vogue will never be to be made to serve another foreign power in weakness.

Today, in what appears to be a shocking turn of events, President Obama announced that he is committed to cutting the deficit in half by 2013 …something which strikes me as merely being just another meaningless politically convenient boiler plate.

My …my …my! One would think that this is a miraculous change of heart.

But is it?

Do not be deceived.

The timing of this announcement …as well as its context smacks suspiciously like an exact identical announcement made by former President Bush.

However, talk is cheap; while actually doing and delivering would be priceless.

Like it is written; with lips they draw near to me; but their hearts are far from me.

Today, even more …Obama’s words, like Bush’s announcement of days soon gone by seem just as likely to be one more empty commitment whose announcement will likely never have a chance in hell of materializing. However, the mere announcement may serve to buy some milage in terms of those who still have the will to extend credit to US.

One thing is certain, such a promise most certainly will served to placate a growing run away spirit in America …the powerful spirit of angst and a dwindling presidential approval rating …both of which coincide with a destination which is a November head-long trainwreck election which will derail the Obama-democratic agenda which has flirted with anything but austerity …responsibility not withstanding.

Thus, such an empty two-faced promise couldn’t have come at a later momen in time.

As for Bush, it came at a time when the price of oil and monetary policies were being rocked by global, geo-political forces too large for Washington’s political will to address, grapple and tackle.

Unrest makes for an easy target …no matter who is managing the helm.

And so It seems such is also the case today more than ever, however …that Mr. Obama's remarks have been made to be tempered by a unified set of forces whose collective will is beyond the reaches of his office’ and the domain of an inescapable sovereign American electorate.

For you see, when the interests of America’s foreign creditors speak …Washington must listen, submit and obey …or so it would seem …more so than to the sovereign electorate.

For you see, such foreign interests are those which have fueled America’s (Obama’s) debt building policies …to include those of the last two mutually intertwined administrations line of reason …which have done nothing but turn to and rely upon debt.

For you see, when these extra-ordinary extraneous sets of powers turn and apply its leverage …a powerfully unified …global mantra …elicits an inescapable sort of external power whose will tends to speak with a bit more persuasion than that of the American electorate.

I know that this is a contradiction in terms by reason of a paradox of what is political service, but bullshit walks …money talks.

And foreign power is saying jump. And Obama is responding with one question; How high?

Whipping boy? Shoot! You haven’t seen anything yet!

No wonder, Mr. Obama has been singing a different tune.

Only our foreign creditors have the sort of money which now has Obama marching to the drum beat of a different drummer …howbeit foreign …which is causing Mr. Obama to speak into a new narrative called “AUSTERITY.”

The power of this rhythm has for its source a power of persuasion which has been clearly unleashed from abroad.

God knows …this administration’s vanity was too obstinate to listen to the voice of its sovereign electorate.

But, am I to believe that all things are become new in the wake of Obama’s new found embrace of all that would appear to placate those calls for austerity?

Unlike domestic calls for priority and prudence, the Obama administration’s response to these foreign seem merely to marginalize the priorities of service to America all the more.

As a captive audience, Obama has no choice in the matter. The world owns US …and therefore has an express obligatory twisted duty to listen and respond to a new world order’s order …within and along the lines of that order’s priorities and objectives …in an ever apparent reality …one which involves being willing and obligated to submit to a higher authority …even if it isn’t …One nation under God …anymore …forevermore.

So, by the same sort of pressures issued from abroad …their growing forces and authorities are and have intended to strongly convey by a consensus of those among Mr Obama's peers at the G-20 summit …austerity is now in vogue.

Spending is out.

Can you say; Why, yes’ir …right away sir ….anything you say, sir?”

Like; “…right away Mr. Benny!”

In view of his seemingly new willingness to cave and ability to turn on a dime, Mr. Obama’s abrupt about face’s turn-about projects a blatant paradox which seems a bit more than that of being merely two-faced …or trying to serve two masters though …and one more than the other …at that.

And …in light of who Mr. Obama should have …would have …and could have …or, ought to have been serving …the concept of political service is becoming increasingly more and more a paradox.

Political service in Washington seems to have fallen short of what could be seen as “A SERVICE TO …” the American people ….with every ounce of his fiber and strength being reserved for submission to a higher authority in the world.

Pity is this paradox! Shame all around. Glory is a scarce commodity.

Yet, for all he and his parties agenda's costs …Mr. Obama's political will is now finally being made to concede to its global flattened tired and has no other choice but to make open verbal concessions which appear to serve and placate international persuasions of greater interests called …self preservation instead.

In this respect, we are truly become the tail …and not the head.

However, let us be clear; Vogue will never be to be made to serve another foreign power in the weakness of pride and vanity …submission maybe, but not a misguided vanity and pride which seeks to rule from blame and shame.

But when will it be learned that; when we are weak …we are strong?

Before then, we may very well will needs must swallow our pride and eat a lot of crow.

At least that seems to be one of many messages which may be taken away from Mr. Obama’s abrupt change of heart.

Now, if only austerity could be made to translate to smaller government and lower taxes so as to promote a jobs friendly invironment of confidence which would casue and promote confidence so as to fostere organic private sector growth machines to once again make jobs which lead to the rise of increases in demand and private sector consumption.

After all, all isn’t it also time for misguided, misleading, meddling governments to cease from policies which are killing jobs and building nothing but dependence upon borrowed money?

Government seems to think they exist to create jobs. Nothing could be further from the truth.

That truly is the height of vanity and pride which no promise will address until its aim is purposed in serving Americans first.

Are you being served yet?

Then you know you need not believe half of everything you hear and half of what you see …not at leas until you have seen and heard half of what you have both seen and heard.

And still that is not enough to build confidence in the wake of gross inconsistencies.

After all, service is given …in consideration of a priority which places Americans in the right order …and that …being under God …the express image of service in the example of love.

Thank you for injecting some sense into this war on who was a worse president and all of this liberal bias and demonization of conservatism.

I applaud your dedication to the facts, showing both Bush's spending binges and lining them right next to Obama's even bigger spending binges. Even more so, I commend you for your citations and links.

You sir, truly know your politics, and you don't spin your data. Fox News, to me, is the closest thing to what you have here, but they- obviously -spin the data towards the right, while you stand practically a centrist.

You're better than Fox News and you're certainly better than the mainstream media. If only they would publish YOUR work on those stations.

Bush destroyed this country. If you even try to deny that you are completely delusional.

Bush pumped money out of this country faster than BP is pumping oil in to the Gulf!

Atleast Obama is spending money in OUR OWN COUNTRY! where it should be spent!

You point out all of the percentages of increased spending that Obama has decided upon but did you put in to consideration that his current spendings reflect nothing compared to the amount of money Bush pretty much burned?

To make money friends you must SPEND money and you must spend it here. Not in Iraq, not in Afghanistan.

Is no one pissed that we were attacked by Afghanistan and Bush blew up Iraq? Do you not even question why this happend?

As Thomas Frank says the Repulicans are the "wrecking crew." They don't have any idea what good government really is. All they care about is power, being in power, and when out of power, getting back into power. The adjective most used to describe George W. Bush at the end of his term was, "incompetent." He came to power with a surplus and left with the country in shambles. His tax cuts for the rich didn't create any jobs, only 3 million compared to President Clinton's 23 million. So now Obama has a huge employment deficit besides the meltdown of the financial sector and the economy. Will the Republicans and the Heritage Foundation be able to continue to dupe the American electorate? I think about 45 percent of Americans don't really catch on to what the Republicans have done over the last thirty years, besides their general dumbing down of Americans. In the last thirty years the annual income increase for 90% of us was 2%. For the top 2% the increase was 57%.

i KNOW U WAS NOT HONEST ABOUT YOUR REPORT . WHY WHY WHY U LIE GOP LIE ABOUT THE iRAQ WAR AN THE REASON WE STARTED IT.WAS THIER WEAPEONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION. NO U LIE LIE LIE LIEDDDDDDD. BUSH SAID WE DONT TORTURE! WATER BROADING UKNOW , U LIED, DEATH PANELS UNO U LIE LIE LIE LIE. LOOK IN THE MIRROR AND TELL GOP AN INDEPENCE FIENDS FIENDS FIENDS THAT U DONT LIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. WHAT JOKE i COULD GO ON ON ABOUT ALL THE LIES.WAS THIER A DEFICIT SUR+ WHEN BUSH STARTED HIS TERM U DID NOT MENTION IT.UKNOW WHAT HEHEEHAHAA.

The Bush spending record is terrible, Obamas is worse, even moronic as evidence of his failed pork bill (the stimulus). What you don't know is Obama doesn't care. If ( more like when) his idiotic economic plans fail he will blame "evil capitalism" and push forward a marxist agenda. Obama's idiology will keep America in a recession , just as Roosevelt extended the Great Deppression for a decade. Just look up supply and demand it is a absolute truth, a law it cannot be manipulated' thats for all you liberal morons, learn something on your own instead of regurgitating your left wing economics proffesors stupid ideas, if he knew anything about economics he wouldn't be teaching at your crappy college.

Wow, interesting, Now flip on over and look at the budget surplus that Clinton left. Too bad Bush was such a poor manager of our funds that he wrecked the economy and started us on the road to nowhere in the economy. It will take forever to dig out again!

Funny how you say Bush this Bush that. Bush had a low deficit until the Democrats received control of Congress. The the free for all spending started. Bush then put through some of his pet projects that increased it. However, the Libs were already spending like drunken prostitutes. Now look at it. Obama is even being restrained and still the budget is going out of control.To the point, senior Democrat types are saying it will DESTROY the Country. Well I see this as a foreign invasion. You know…Obama being Foreign and all. So what do we do to repel foreign invasion. Get out our guns and bombs and start a shooting. Hey Mr. Obama better watch out. The Country is rising up against your insanity. You truly are starting to look like your pals Hitler's Socialist Party, Stalin, and more. What next? You start going along with King Shabazz's rhetoric killing Whites? You seem to not disagree with his comments maybe this is your agenda. Divide the classes, divide the races, White against Hispanics, Hispanics against Blacks, etc. You are a complete and utter disaster.

Carroll perfectly displays conservative dishonesty and failure to take responsibility. 1st Carroll splits the 2009 deficit between Bush and Obama whereas it would have been simple to assign the actual numbers between the budget deficit (Bush) and stimulus (Obama). Carroll's method inflated Obama's contribution to the 2009 deficit. 2nd Carroll is intentionally misleading by juxtaposing Bush's 3% anti-poverty spending with Obama's 20% increase in antipoverty spending. An honest report would compare 3% to 3.5%. 3rd Carroll's and Washington Post's CBO graphics were created with assumptions such as the continuation of Bush's tax cuts which are slated to expire. Finally Carroll cites projected deficits through 2016. The graphic through 2012 shows a 50% reduction from the 2009 Bush deficit. Carroll and the Heritage Foundation are once again guilty of faulty analysis or maybe just plain lies.

C'mon people. Clinton never left a surplus. If you believe that, you've got no business commmenting on politics. In order to leave a surplus, Clinton's administration would have to have eliminated the deficit, when in reality, the deficit increased under Clinton. Clinton did a good job of balancing the budget, but did not eliminate the deficit.

Conservatives and thinking men tried to warn everyone about electing a socialist radical with a weak track record. Across from him was a real life war hero. A man who’s character was tested as a Vietnam POW. A man who has a solid track record who also has a history of woking with both parties. John McCain’s policies about government and spending would made a huge difference. Oh well, it took a Jimmy Carter to make a Ronald Reagan, who had probably the most prosperous administration of any president of late. Likewise, Obama will allow a Republican, hopefully a real Conservative to come in and get us back on track.

How about that 8 billion dollars in cash that Bush and Cheney sent to Iraq, and was "lost?" Did you add that is? AND did you consider that it costs MORE to undo a MESS, then it does to create one? You are so biased, and your study means NOTHING! Mr Carroll, I think you are a real Conn artist!

While we squabble over the past, no one talks about the big (non-partisan) elephant: The standard of living in America, propped up by decades of borrow-and-spend policies of BOTH Dems and Republicans (Reagan left us a big fat deficit), is about to seek it's proper level, and no one is going to like it. Truth is, we have failed to invest in the things that would make our population more competitive in the new global economy, choosing instead to 1) blow our money in Iraq, and 2) spend it on consumption. Now our lines of credit are tapped out, and we will have to live within our means. So why not put down your vitriolic, partisan pens and make a contribution to a solution?

Everyone…remember this information is from The Heritage Foundation, these are the guys who told us that the people of Iraq would treat us as liberators…thousands of soliders died based on that bogus information. All, i am saying is check other sources…be responsible. This organization and others like it, are cheerleaders for the Republician Party.

[…] help with a 13 trillion dollar debt created BEFORE the last election? This might help you. Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures | The Foundry: Conservative Policy News. __________________ "If the Obama administration is so scared of Glen Beck, how do they deal […]

Making intersections safe for all by electronically forcing cars to come to a halt when the traffic siganal is red. The pieces are already in existance. The computer is already in the car.

Insureance companies would be the biggest recepiences of new profits. Insurance premiums. Millions of cars could be retrofited. Thousands of people would go to work making the kits to install in cars all over the world.

Generally automobiles would be ten times safer. Deaths from accidents wouldmgo down drastically. Leap foreward America. We have the spirit and the means to leasd the world to a new mountain top view.

LOL i know where some of the money to help balance the budget come the end of this year the welfare for the rich is going to expire yes welfare for the rich the gop has shot them selves in the foot, the party of NO blocking UE insurance blocking health care for the rescue workers for the WTC attack , one thing you conservatives need to rember history is written by the victor not the loser, victory something you guys havent tasted in a long time and never will again, raise the retirement age to 70 the american citizen has gotten wise your bullshit have a nice trip back to your home town in november do you hear the flushing of the rest of you turds i hear it loud and clear X republican here keep the tax cuts for the top 3% and cut entitlements by they way people piad for those in their paychecks oh yea and the moron that said impeach the *%^^(# you biggoted asshole you and your kind are dinosaurs like john stewart said go *^$@ yourself

Who can forget the ever increasing Bailouts for the Wall Street Criminals and wide spread Bank bailouts with corrupt CEO recipients at the head of these institution who behind close doors have lined there pockets with absolutely no accountability.Also lets not forget the huge WAR which was inherited by the Obama Administration and the huge Financial mess that was inherited by the current administration, a WAR that has continued to produce more deaths by the thousands with very minimal reasons as to what our why is. White Collar American greed has ruled the underclasses worker as well as profited from un- document workers and illegal aliens to build wealth and financial gain. They use the illegals also for political gain while still openly using their business to recruit undocumented workers and illegals while abusing there personal taxes searching for loop holes to cheat and bilk the system for financial gain.Obama is our President hes not a Miracle worker, its these type of abuses that has shaped and controlled our American way of life throughout the decade.

All of you people are wasting your time arguing about "who done it", the fact is that none of you know anything. You only know whats in the news and on the web. The government gives you just enough information to have something to fight about amongst yourselves while America is so focused on fighting each other "they" are able to make all of our decisions for us. There is nothing that any of you can do about our current situation, so why fight about it? Pick up a western civ book and you will find that all great empires fall, some rise back, and some fade away forever. Its life, its history, just deal with it and make the most of your life. Do yourself a favor and read Kippling's "The Man Who Would Be King". oh and this is exactly why Washington advised that we stray away from political parties and foriegn affairs…it has been the ruin of our country.

Absolutely ridiculous. I don't know I wasted a few minutes reading this article. I assumed there would be some unbiased factual analysis here. It's just pure cherry-picking of stats that suit the writer's needs and illogical cause-and-effect. The conservative Heritage Foundation even says 1/3 of the cumulative deficits during Bush's last 6 years and Obama's first 1.5 years are from poorer than expected economic growth and stock market performance. Assigning blame is pretty subjective there. The rest of the breakdown: Bush tax cuts + Medicare Rx drug + War in Iraq equal about 25%. Interest on the debt more than forecasted in 2002 = 12%. TARP/bailouts/War in Afghanistan = 4% (things both Presidents agreed on). 2009 Stimulus + Obama Tax Rebates = 9%. Higher than expected discretionary domestic spending and other defense spending = 18%. The report I saw did not detail which portion of new discretionary spending was during Bush's terms vs. Obama's. I would like to see this writer post a pie chart of this FULL AND COMPLETE breakdown IN PICTURES. It becomes quite apparent that the deficit is NOT due to new Obama long-term spending programs as the Republican talking points indicate. Go back in time and remember what was happening to our economy shortly after he took office. The economy was completely in shambles, he passed SHORT-TERM stimulus spending and SHORT-TERM tax rebates to try to minimize the worst of of the recession. Look at the deficit pie chart and tell me who you think is the responsible leader here.

[…] lied about what he was going to do. One quick example is blaming Bush for the Economy. The last four years of the Bush administration before he was saddled with a Democrat congress in 200… Then in 2008 and 2009 the Democrat congress spent and spent. I blame Bush only for not […]

The author should be ashamed of himself for being disingenuous if not dishonest. The fact is, "W" increased the national debt by nearly $4.9 trillion during his 8 years in office — not $2.5 trillion as stated by the author.

The 2009 fiscal year, for which the deficit was about $1.4 trillion, started on Oct 1, 2008 and ran through Sept 30, 2009. Since Oct.1 , 2008 predates the election of President Obama, then the administration that submitted the budget (and quadrupled the deficit according to our friends here) was that of outgoing President George W. Bush.

The only thing that will save this country is to get back to the beginnings. We were founded on Christian principles, we believed in self-government, we worked hard to achieve – those that didn't work, didn't make it. We loved our country and fought to keep it free.

We cannot allow tyranny. We cannot allow taxation without representation. We cannot allow our borders to remain open. We cannot kill the spirit of innovation and productivity.

It all starts inside of each of us. We can turn this country around and heal what the White House has done to us. We cannot do it with their help. The entitlement mentality must stop.

As far as the wars – there has been wars ever since the beginning of time. They will continue. It is better to fight in other countries, than in ours, as long as our country is at risk of invasion (which, we are).

I don't have the answers. But all of us do. If we will just get together, online, and share solutions to each problem, we can find the answers.

But – government MUST listen too its people. The majority is against this administration, yet the administration keeps doing what it wants to do. That is tyranny.

Deficit is the difference between money coming in and money going out, not just spending.

Unemployed people do not pay taxes. This graph ignores that tax revenue dropped because of unemployment, due to the recession. It also ignores the Bush tax cuts. When those expire and people start getting back to work these numbers will look a lot different.http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayaf…

Funny how no one mentions how Reagan exploded the deficit. First President in 40 years to leave it significantly worse than he found it. Meanwhile, Clinton and FDR were able to make the biggest reductions.

Wait a minute. Isn't that 1.8 trillion figure from 2009 part of Bush's deficit? I've read he's responsible for at least 1.3 trillion dollars of it. That means Bush quadrupled his OWN deficit, and Obama would cut Bush's deficit in half. Bush's previous annual budgets were artificially low because he kept out the war costs. But even doing that, according to your own chart, he turned a democratic surplus into a huge deficit! The deficit is a big problem, but it's not all Obama's fault.

If course spending will increase. My bills are far higher now than in the time when Carter was President. than when Bush senior and Bill Clinton were in power. Also times and needs change. Its futile to compare.

Likely the next president no matter what colour of flag he uses will increase spending yet again. The important thing is not all spending is bad. Some helps the most important thing we have….. PEOPLE

Funny how no one mentions how Reagan exploded the deficit. First President in 40 years to leave it significantly worse than he found it. Meanwhile, Clinton and FDR were able to make the biggest reductions."

I like that post….. truth is people quote the bits that suit and omit the bits that counter their argument Thanks John,

While I am not disputing the numbers and will trust your research, aren't you looking at one side of the problem? By suggesting that Obama significantly increased the deficit without citing the challenges he faced upon entering office is ignoring half of the discussion. Our country was on the verge of implosion. I don't think anyone disputes this. I didn't vote for the man, but he is taking a concerted effort to get the country back on it's feet. I am all for a balanced budget and spending constraint. But we have to consider what would have happeend if Obama did not fund the bail outs.

In terms of prescription drugs, medical care and education; why are we debating this? Why not debate how much of our GDP goes toward entertainment?

Have people bragging about the "clinton surplus" forgotten who had control of Congress during that time? Yep, it was the Republicans. Remember, it takes 3 branches of government to do the deed and it seems when the Republicans have the ball the numbers go down and when the Democrats have all 3 branches the costs are insane.

So let me get this straight, Bush leads this country into the biggest housing bust and biggest recession since the great depression, stock market crashes(twice under him), unemployment at horrible levels and a war that we are going to be paying for well into the next three presidencies if not more, and some how Obama is responsible? At least Obamas Money is spent on us instead of some land far far away that won't give two squirts about us the minute we leave. Bush's Money was thrown away in Iraq. Obama's money will help us grow.

As for this deficit stuff Bush spends and implements all these programs and funds a war. Guess what Obama is given all these programs what is he supposed to do just cut everybody off. If Bush was so great why did impose all these programs that Obama now has to work with. Basically republicans created a big turd for Obama and now they expect him to polish it.

Where the hell were all these smart guys when Bush was running this country into the ground for eight years. This is all cattle politics- scare the cows enough and they will go wherever you lead them. Make no mistake about it Bush got us to where we are, dont fall for the propaganda think for yourself. Don't forget that the republican had 8 years to solve these problems. If Obama can't do it then maybe we should be looking at the independent party. But give Obama more than two years to fix the eight year problem before you start yelling the sky is falling

I'm with Gina. Augie is insane. You need to track back the housing bust to it's origins (Clinton) who required banks to give money to those unable to pay them back or face steep penalties. It was part of his "american dream for everyone" crap. The only American Dream anyone gets or deserves is that hardwork will get you ahead in life. Notice I didn't say get you what you want, desire or where you think you should be. You will get ahead. Obama went to college as did most of congress yet they still seem to think that if they do the same things the dems have always done they will somehow get different results. I picture Obama sitting up late at night in the Whitehouse pouring over old FDR speechs and updating them for the current times. Obama would like to spend Billions more past his bailout on infrastructure projects….can anyone say "hoover dam"?

In the immortal words of Winston Churchill, "trying to spend your way out of a recession is like standing in a pale and trying to lift yourself by the handle".

I'll give Bush credit where credit is due though. I think he signed the TARP into play at the end as a big "F" you to the American people for roasting him so much during his term. For public opinion being with the dems so loudly and republicans sitting on their haunches. It was more of a wake up call to those who needed it. I really do thank him for it and I thank Mr. Obama. The near bankrupt economy has forced so many people out of work and caused so many people to lose their homes that as a landlord renting to section 8 people….I'm doing great. Things couldn't be better. Now I have dozens of low income people living in homes paid for by the people I go to work with every day as part of their taxes. The renters have no ambition as there are no incentives to meet their Maslow needs. It is all covered by Obamanomics…..I mean the people left working to pay for those that don't. Wait….when you say it that way….it sounds alot like marxism. It couldn't be marxism. We've seen that silly experiment tried time and time again and fail each time. We couldn't be trying it and expecting different results as that would be the definition of insanity.

So President Chaney and VP Bush leaves us with this huge mess. Not just in the USA but the whole world. So as soon as Obama takes office, the Republicans wash their hands. A war started with lies. Big Oil and Wall Street. Hold back of unemployment benefits. Extend tax break to the wealthiest. Hold back legislation to help small business. They say the Stimulus failed. No it didn't. It just couldn't overcome the huge hole that we were put in. If if wasn't for the Stimulus, unemployment would be at least 16% and foreclosures will be through the roof. No pun intended. The trickle effect of that would be more businesses closing and hardships abound. In order to get out of a recession, you must spend. Who has the money? Not the common people. Every Republican president since 1950 raised the national debt. Every Democratic president lowered it. Now all of a sudden the deficit is a big issue with the Republicans. All of a sudden the word "reconciliation" is a bad word. Yet when Bush passed the tax break for the wealthy, how did it get passed? How are you going to pay for the continuation of the tax break for the wealthiest? You want to lower the deficit but you also will raise it. The republicans are speaking out of both sides of their months. Look, I don't like the rising deficit. If the Republicans would work together to turn this economy around, the rich will still be rich and us common folks get on with our lives. Then when elections come around, get what? You helped the economy and get reelected. Now you started this Tea Party and I will never forgive you for introducing Sarah Parah to the stage. Wait! I can see Russia. The way I look at it, 98% should vote Democratic because the Republicans only care about the rich. Bottom line!

"And for those who believe WII brought us out of the Great Depression, how did it do that? Spending." You talk as if our economy and the world economy are the same as they were back then. Back then we were also producing goods. We were creating jobs. The money spent strengthened all levels of the economy. Much of the spending proposed by the Democrats are flushed down the toilet on programs that TEMPORARILY relieve (if at all) the groups they wish to pander to. Nice logical fallacy.

I think it is ridiculous to just add up the numbers without considering the fact that it takes money to make money! How can President Obama get us out of a deep hole without spending money? How unfair, ridiculous and obviously unintelligent of you! Why don't you try a little harder to skew things against Obama? How does it feel to have no pride, or integrity?!

i hope everyone on here woul;d just stop! with the democrat and republican arguing! stop look at other things both parties do! candidates who spend upward of 20 million dollars of there on money to be elected for office ie recently in the state of florida, during last presidential election both sides doing same- if these people really care about you and i them let them take that money put it togther and supply job training to legimate people who have lost there jobs and want to work- remember ross perot i didnt know what to think of him 1 thing i'll never forget if nafta is passed hear great vacumn sound of our jobs leaving this country! believe he told truth on that one- all im saying is wake up and realize why would somone spend that kind of money to run for job that pays 400,000 a year tops? why so they can get there way in life dont be fooled! i say time to can congress and senate and put all votes up before american people have it where we can vote by text, computer, phone figure it out you eliminate special intrest right there!

[…] it would be? Maybe you need to get your information from someplace other than the White House. LINK President Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the […]

Absolutely, the Heritage group is the organization that corrected the (CBO) Congressional Budet Office on the intial Health Care Bill costs before the congress ram-roded it down the amercan publics throat. They were right and the (CBO) was wrong! Bill Clinton, Braney Frank(D) and Chriss Dodd(D) relaxed the lending practices for Fanni and Freddi in 1994 that created the housing bubble which in turn caused the recession! Further more, Frank Raines the CEO at Fanni and Freddi made a record 900 million perso